Carlos Quentin’s punishment likely to be light

In baseball, the punishment does not fit the crime. Even assault with a bat has drawn only a slap on the wrist.

Apr 12, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

USA TODAY Sports

Don Mattingly was understandably irate after last night's bench-clearing brawl between the Dodgers and Padres in the bottom of the sixth inning last night in San Diego. Former Cy Young award winner Zack Greinke was tackled by Carlos Quentin and broke his collarbone. The timetable of his recovery and return is still uncertain. "He caused the whole thing," Mattingly said of Quentin. "Nothing happens if he goes to first base like in baseball you know you do, because you know he's not throwing at you 3-2 in a 2-1 game. That's zero understanding of the game of baseball. He shouldn't play a game until Greinke can pitch."

As Craig Calcaterra pointed out earlier, there is no precedent for the eye-for-an-eye punishment:

Also in 2010 - and maybe this is the most instructive - the Cardinals and Reds got into a bench-clearing brawl. Reds pitcher Johnny Cueto, pushed up against the backstop by the scrum - began indiscriminately kicking people. One of the people he kicked was Cardinals catcher Jason LaRue, giving him a concussion which ended his career... Cueto was suspended for seven games for his "violent and aggressive actions," per the Major League Baseball press release. As a starting pitcher, that was, in effect, a one-game suspension.

All of this is a relatively recent phenomenon, however, as brawls were treated with light discipline prior to the 1990s. A great example: a May 20, 1976 brawl between the Yankees and Red Sox... Yankees' third basemen Graig Nettles body slammed Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee - who had been jawing at the Yankees in the press for years - and broke his collarbone. Then he punched him in the eye for good measure. Lee missed nearly two months of action. Nettles was not suspended at all.

An earlier example, and an even more vivid one: on August 22, 1965, the Dodgers were playing at San Francisco in the third and final game of a key series; the two clubs were separated by just 1.5 games at the start of play with about a quarter of the season to go. Tensions were high, each team getting catcher-interference calls when their bats ticked the catchers's mitts -- each thought the other had done it intentionally. Two future Hall of Famers, Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal started for the Dodgers and Giants, respectively. The clubs had a long history of bitter rivalry, and Marichal was unafraid to pitch inside: Early in the game he knocked down Maury Wills and Ron Fairly. Despite the high-and-tight offerings, Marichal was far from a headhunter, hitting only 40 batters in a career lasting from 1960 to 1975. During those same years, Jim Bunning hit 125 batters, Don Drysdale 112, Jim Kaat 109, and Bob Gibson 101. Nonetheless, the Dodgers, and catcher Johnny Roseboro in particular, were predictably incensed.

Koufax wasn’t a headhunter either -- like Walter Johnson 50 years before him, he was as much a humanist as a competitor and feared that someone hit by a pitcher of his stuff could suffer serious injury or even death. Despite suffering from the young lefty’s typical wildness early in his career (Koufax averaged 5.3 walks per nine innings from 1955 through 1960), he hit just 18 batters in 2324-1/3 career innings. When Marichal came to bat in the bottom of the third, Roseboro goaded Koufax to retaliate for the earlier brush-back pitches and at first the left-hander seemed to comply, his first offering coming in high and inside. When his second pitch was low and inside, however, Roseboro was apparently dissatisfied and took matters into his own hands, his return throw to the pitcher coming so close to the batter’s head that Marichal claimed it had nicked his ear.

Roseboro got the fight he wanted. Marichal turned on the catcher, shouting at him. “Why [did] you do that?” and cursing in Spanish. Roseboro got out of his crouch, had dropped his catcher’s helmet and mask, and was about to get in Marichal’s face -- and that was when Marichal hit him over the head with his bat. Repeatedly. Roseboro reeled, blood flowing from a scalp laceration. Both teams rushed onto the field. Willie Mays got to the plate first and pulled Roseboro away, saying, “Johnny, Johnny, I’m so sorry.” Roseboro somehow avoided concussion or a skull fracture, but needed 14 stitches to close the cut on his head.

Juan Marichal ( Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE)

Whatever the provocation of Marichal, who later claimed self-defense, saying that he thought Roseboro was reaching for his mask with the intent to strike him, the incident that day comes as close to assault with a deadly weapon as has ever happened on a baseball field. We can debate whether Carl Mays was headhunting Ray Chapman when he threw the pitch that killed the Indians shortstop in 1920 without being able to come to a resolution because only Mays knew what was in his mind at that moment, whereas you can't hit someone with a bat and claim that it got away from you. If ever there was a call for a long suspension, maybe even a lifetime ban, this was it.

National League president Warren Giles suspended Marichal for nine days. “I am sure you recognize how repugnant your actions were in the game. Such actions... must be dealt with drastically.” However, in looking over the series, Giles pointed to “underlying currents” -- the bat-tipping incidents -- and apparently also took into consideration how the Marichal suspension would distort the pennant race: the Giants’ ace, Marichal was 19-9 with a 1.78 ERA at the time.

Though the punishment would cost Marichal two starts at the worst possible moment for the Giants, the Dodgers were disgusted. "That's sickening," Fairly said, "It should be a suspension of 1,750 days." In the end, it all worked out in their favor. Marichal wasn't the same pitchyer after the suspension, going 5-4 with a league-average 3.55 ERA. The Dodgers won the pennant by two games, then won a seven-game World Series over the Minnesota Twins.

So, broken collarbone or not, in baseball there is a precedent for a mild rebuke for something as serious as trying to bash someone's brains out. Heck, even Mays only missed a week, and that was voluntary. Mattingly's outrage is understandable, but his only hope for serious discipline is that the commissioner's office views the incident as less like a typical baseball brawl and more like the 2006 incident in which then-minor leaguer Delmon Young threw a bat at an umpire. The International League suspended him for 50 games, the longest penalty in the history of the league.

Of course, as a minor leaguer, Young didn’t have union representation. Quentin does, which means any punishment viewed as severe is subject to appeal to an arbitrator. Mattingly’s cause may be righteous, but he’s going to see Carlos Quentin back on the field far sooner than he would like.