Baseball Brawl Revisited

On Saturday March 9, 2013 at the World Baseball Classic, Mexico and Canada were told that runs scored and runs against ratio would be used in case of a tiebreaker to prevent tie-breaking games. The only disadvantage is that the teams would have to score as many points as possible to prevent them from being eliminated. Sports athletes do get frustrated when they get embarrassed and some teams might be scared to score more points to embarrass the other team. It even causes violence which eventually happened later in the game between Mexico and Canada. Baseball has a unwritten rule which teams abide by when the score is a blowout that they do not bunt the baseball for a base hit, steal a base or a sacrifice that does not involve sacrifice flies and fielders choice. Canada broke the rule but running up the score was not the cause. It was the way the Canadian baseball players tried to score more runs. Mexico should have tried to hit the batter once whether it almost hit the batter or hit the batter. Therefore the message was brought to the Canadians attention. Baseball does not need to change the tie-breaking format. One thing they should do, if two teams are tied for second place and both of them played against each other earlier in the round, the tiebreaker should be rewarded to the winning team. To prevent further incidents like the bench clearing brawl at the 2013 World Baseball Classic teams should educate each other about how to run up the score following the unwritten rules and how to punish the team for breaking the unwritten rules without causing a bench clearing brawl.

Stephen Rysen March 12, 2013