Cole Hamels Suspended 5 Games For Hitting Bryce Harper

I was an idiot when I was a teenager. You were an idiot when you were a teenager. If you’re still a teenager, well, you seem nice, and thanks for coming to the site, but you’re about to do something really stupid. You should probably put down those car keys and sit on your hands for a couple of years.

Now it’s Ozzie Guillen as agent provocateur, trying to goad Harper into doing something stupid.

That’s why Hamels got a five-game suspension.

Rizzo’s been fined an undisclosed amount of money, but the amount probably isn’t anything he can’t afford. Hamels, in addition to his five-game suspension, was also fined but it probably wasn’t more than $10,000. So you can imagine how much Rizzo might have been fined.

Anthony Fenech:

Well then. How...minorly unexpected. Care to explain?

Anyhoo, Cole Hamels hit Bryce Harper with a fastball and said that he did it on purpose. That was Sunday night. Monday, Major League Baseball suspended Hamels for five games. Ordinarily when a player gets suspended he immediately files an appeal, but it would take some real stones on Hamels’ part to appeal a suspension he received specifically because he said he drilled a guy on purpose. Some real stones, indeed. Mike Rizzo’s right, Cole Hamels is gutless.

Of course five games isn’t enough.

Or wait, maybe it’s too much.

And with that, our long national nightmare is over. I’m sure that no one will ever, ever throw at Bryce Harper again.

That’s a fastball, right in the small of the back. Immediately there was suspicion that Hamels had done it on purpose, trying to send some sort of message. Afterward, Hamels removed all doubt, admitting to his intent of trying to send some sort of message. I honestly can’t remember a pitcher admitting to throwing at a batter. I’m sure that it’s happened, and in fairness I can’t remember if I’ve checked the mail today, but it’s rare. Even under the most obvious of circumstances, you expect a denial, because where there’s denial there’s doubt, and where there’s doubt there’s less severe punishment, if there’s punishment at all.

Hamels will presumably be punished. Major League Baseball is investigating the matter, and they essentially have no choice. If they don’t punish Hamels, then that sets the wrong sort of precedent. Unless Major League Baseball is looking to mold its game to look more like MLB SlugFest 2003. Hamels will receive some suspension and then MLB will be like, “if you’re going to throw at a batter, don’t say you were throwing at a batter. That forces us to do this.” That’s not what they’ll say, but that’s what they’ll mean.

The Nationals are a team with a substantial buzz around them. Their ownership has been spending money, building a competitive team. They stumbled into two of the top amateur talents of the past 20 years, who are both arriving and coming into their own at the same time. This is the kind of roster that could make D.C. a baseball town over the next decade. All it needs is a spark to light the tinder.

“I’m not going to injure a guy,” Hamels said. “They’re probably not going to like me for it. But I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t trying to do it.“There you go. Take the talented, smarmy guy whom only his own fans could love, and have him wing a pitch at the teenager who is supposed to drive the golden chariot that leads the franchise out of obscurity. Then have him admit it. Then have the Nationals G.M. call the smarmy guy “fake tough.” It was the baseball equivalent of the USS Maine -- an incendiary turn of events that gets people worked up beyond reason. It was perfect for the Nationals. That one pitch did more than any slogan could possibly hope to.

“Players take care of themselves,” Rizzo said after I called him this morning. “I’ve never seen a more classless, gutless chicken [bleep] act in my 30 years in baseball.

“Cole Hamels says he’s old school? He’s the polar opposite of old school. He’s fake tough. He thinks he’s going to intimidate us after hitting our 19-year rookie who’s eight games into the big leagues? He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”

“This goes beyond rivalry and all that stuff,” Rizzo said. “This points to, you take the youngest guy in baseball. He’s never done a thing. And then Hamels patted himself on the back. Harper’s old school. Hitting him on the back, that ain’t old school. That’s [bleeping] chicken [bleep].”

”I was trying to hit him. I’m not going to deny it. It’s something I grew up watching. That’s what happened. I’m just trying to continue the old baseball. Some people get away from it. I remember when I was a rookie, the strike zone was really, really small and you didn’t say anything. That’s the way baseball is. Sometimes the league is protecting certain players. It’s that old-school prestigious way of baseball.

“I’m not going to injure a guy. They’re probably not going to like me for it but I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t trying to do it. I think they understood the message and they threw it right back. That’s the way, and I respect it. They can say whatever they want.”

Sounds about right. Hamels said he wasn’t “going to injure a guy”, but there’s no guarantee of that if you intentionally throw a baseball at another human being.