MLB’s ‘unwritten rules’ on show in Hunter Strickland’s feud with Bryce Harper

Gregg Patton offers his take on the Hunter Strickland and Bryce Harper fight.

Washington Nationals' Bryce Harper, left, prepares to hit San Francisco Giants' Hunter Strickland after being hit with a pitch in the eighth inning of a game on Monday in San Francisco. Ben Margot / AP PhotoShow less

In Major League Baseball, players call them “unwritten rules”.

Often they dictate a code of conduct, crafted over the years to keep players from disrespecting others. For example, it is considered bad sportsmanship to steal bases when your team are winning by a lot of runs. No piling on.

Sometimes the “rules” are used to settle scores. If your Player A slides too hard into one of my players, Player A soon can expect a black and blue mark from a fastball on some of his soft tissue.

It is old school baseball. Eye-for-an-eye stuff.

Rules of any kind, of course, should embrace a sense of fairness. But this past week, when San Francisco Giants pitcher Hunter Strickland drilled Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals in the hip with a 158-kilometre-per-hour fastball, those “unwritten rules” that Strickland leaned on were completely out of whack.

Harper’s baseball crime was committed in the 2014 play-offs, when he hit a pair of home runs off the Giants relief pitcher. It was Homer No 2 that apparently turned Strickland into the furious elephant that never forgets.

Harper stood in the batter’s box for a few seconds waiting for the ball to land fair or foul, admiring its flight, which tracked through the sky like a tilted Roman candle. Strickland wanted Harper to put his head down and run immediately, like players used to do in the early part of the 20th century. Bryce is not that guy.

If Harper could hit a baseball 425 feet, then pull a mirror out of his back pocket to fix his hair just right before leaving the box, he would. But that is too showy even for the Nationals star, so eventually he got into his trot, with Strickland yelling at him, and Harper yelling back as he circled the bases.

Then two full seasons passed and Strickland never faced Harper. Finally, this week, he got his chance, long after normal people forgot. First pitch, Strickland unleashed one of the hardest, most accurate heaters of his career, a tattoo on Harper’s hip.

Now here’s the thing. Some pitchers, somehow, can strike a guy out, pump their fists, pound their gloves and yell “Boom!” Pitchers’ celebrations fit those “showing me up” displays that are supposed to be discouraged by the unwritten rules, but nobody seems to care.

But if a batter, say Harper, does his “styling” routine after a dinger, an angry beanball is somehow just fine. Even if that pitch could potentially break a bone, shatter a face or end a career.

Or, as Harper put it, “A baseball is a weapon, and being able to use that to his advantage, that’s what he did.”

So Harper ran to the mound, the two exchanged punches and after a small scrum, Harper and Strickland were ejected.

A day later, MLB announced that Strickland would be suspended six games, and Harper four.

Another totally unjust result, of course. Relief pitcher Strickland is a marginal role player who likely would not play more than three or four innings in those six games. Harper is the Nationals’ best man, an outfielder who likely will miss all or most of 36 innings.

Still, Harper does have to be punished. Charging a mound must have consequences because baseball, understandably, cannot tolerate fisticuffs.

The irony is that the only way Strickland was going to be disciplined at all for his dangerous action was for Harper to draw attention to it, by instigating a fight.

MLB likely would not have done a thing about the hit by pitch, on its own, thanks to one of its most foolish, unwritten rules.

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