MLB: Plunking is Stupid

By: Brock Vierra

It is. Plunking is stupid. For those unfamiliar with the baseball lingo that makes some people feel that the sport is superior to other sports, plunking is when you drill a batter with the ball, preferably as hard as you can. Now there are many reasons why pitchers feel inclined to haul a hard ball at someone, oftentimes inflicting unbearable pain. Maybe in the last half-inning, the opposing team plunked your guy, maybe you are looking for some revenge, whether justified or spurred on by the breaking of the often ridiculed, never-understood “unwritten rules of baseball.” Maybe a guy conks your pitch 400 feet and your little, tiny, teeny, weeny, itty, bitty, poor old feelings got hurt because said batter took three seconds to admire taking you yard. Maybe it’s because you threw someone’s first hit into the crowd.

That’s what happened this week. In a series between the Cardinals and the Mets, St. Louis shortstop Masyn Winn made it known that he is well on his way toward a personally and financially fulfilling career in baseball. The young 21-year-old from Katy, Texas made his MLB debut this week and took his first step toward Cooperstown with his first hit, an infield single. A chopper hit to third, one-handed, and thrown off the line to first baseman Pete Alonso (even though Winn beat the throw by a mile) set up this scenario. Most likely unaware that this was his first professional hit, Alonso tossed the ball into the stands. Cardinals first base coach Stubby Clapp, aware of the achievement asked Alonso “Did you just throw that ball in the stands?” Alonso was then made aware of his error. According to Winn, Alonso apologized to him right there. Later in the game, when Alonso reached second, he apologized to Winn again. When asked by the media, Alonso had this to say.

“I feel awful, I didn’t mean to. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s just a bad brain fart. I know throwing the ball in the stands, that robs him of kind of a really special moment. I feel really bad thinking back on my first hit, and just getting the ball thrown back to the dugout. I feel awful. I feel like a piece of crap. It’s just in the heat of the moment you kind of get lost”

Alonso made a mistake; he expressed genuine remorse to both the offended and Winn (the guy who should have been offended). Winn got the ball back. We’re adults. Outside of twitter, no harm, no foul. Now as fans and for them as athletes, we can proceed with this great game and….the Cardinals plunked Alonso. The Cards didn’t confront him then and there, they’re was no punches. They waited until he was a defenseless batter and they tried to hurt him. Bush league.

Now I’m all for backing batters off the plate. Make them feel the heat and if this was back in the day, sometimes you got to plunk somebody. But for me, it was okay then because that batter was sprinting to take off your head. Time to fight baby. THIS. IS. BASEBALL! See kids, once upon a time, baseball was a contact sport. You could blast batters, you could fight pitchers, you could slide hard into bases to take fielders off of their feet. Yeah, double plays back in the day used to take some real skill. My favorite was that you could truck catchers. Catcher has the ball in his glove, well I hope you can withstand a rumbling, tumbling, overweight ball of Hawaiian food and raw fish coming at you because I am knocking that thang out! Baseball was dope. You had dudes pimping balls out of the park, you had brawls that would make relievers run sub 4.4 40s to knock someone out. You could do what you wanted and you could be who you are. Especially you Manny Ramirez.

You could put substances on ball, you could take steroids, you could have batting practice on Christmas while you millionaire father uses his connection with Tommy Lasorda to put you in the Dodgers farm system and despite the fact no one thinks you could be anything, you end up becoming one of the greatest catchers of all time. You then hit a homer after 9/11 and are immortalized in Mets lore despite losing the 2000 Subway Series to my Yankees. Shoutout “El Duque” for being the reason we didn’t sweep and why is Paul O’Neill in Monument Park? Questions for another time. Baseball was great.

So great that you could smoke 400 packs of heaters in a 162 game season. 500 packs if you made the playoffs. You could fake an injury to sleep with celebrities, you could cork your bats and then try to send someone on a secret mission to steal the bats before they were inspected. You could get ejected from the game, go into your office and manage the game on the phone. You could grow up in an impoverished area of the Dominican Republic, sleep on dirty floors you share with your five other siblings. You could practice your pitches with oranges because you can’t afford baseballs. You could follow your brother to the Dodgers at just 14, leaving your entire family behind. You could grind and push, make your way to the majors, record over 200 wins and over 3000 strikeouts. You could do all that just to have the one opportunity, the one thing we all got to dream. To grab Don Zimmer by his pudgy balled head and throw his ass to the ground. I love baseball.

But for some reason, baseball has turned into this soft game where batters are fearful of upsetting the league and pitchers use their added protection to project how soft they are and how big of an ego they have. The league has stricken their punishments for players who initiate fights and punish players who participate in them, even just to defend themselves. Because of that and the illegal, legality that his beaning someone (another slang term for plunking), pitchers have free reign to hit whomever they like and the batter for his pain, is given the lowly first base. Yes at least you have someone of base but that also doesn’t mean a thing either. So guys like Madison Bumgarner can blast you without repercussion because you admired an absolute missile launched off of your stick during the last at-bat.This article mentions your favorite hats at super low prices. Choose from same-day delivery, drive-up delivery or order pickup.

See back in the day. Bob Gibson was throwing heat right at you. However, Gibson would throw the pitch because he couldn’t start with the punch. Behind his ball was his fist and it was a man’s game. Now batters dare to take three steps towards a pitcher, he’s suspended for three games. What used to be all out brawls is now a race to just get into each other’s face. I mean Jose Ramirez and Tim Anderson’s fight was so alluring because it felt like the first one in forever.

What I don’t like about plunking isn’t the defensiveness of the batter as a rubber ball being flung from 60 feet at 100 mph coming towards his head but its the hypocrisy about it. Baseball has made tremendous strides in terms of player safety but at the loss of the competitiveness within the game. These rules were put into place because MLB lost their golden boy Buster Posey in a bang bang play. So you want to eliminate things that can cause injuries but you turn a blind eye to beaning someone with a baseball. An action that has sidelined superstars left and right.

Plunking is idiotic, immature and full of bull jive. You want to hit someone? Go hit them. Only problem is that now that person can hit back. Put in consequences for plunking. End this stupid madness now before something really goes bad.