Tit for tat

If your pitcher hits my batter (especially the best batter), then my pitcher is going to hit one of your best batters.

Such is the mindset behind retaliation in baseball. It's barbaric, testosterone induced, outdated, macho behavior that should have no part in a professional game between men who depend on the health of their bodies for their livelihood.

Yet......I absolutely love it.

Hockey has its fights, football has its blindside legal hits (i.e. Hines Ward to Keith Rivers), and basketball has hard fouls for showboaters.

Without retaliatory hit by pitches, baseball has no method for players to police themselves, and as savage as it may be, this is important. Plus it increases the possibility for a brawl, which everyone loves.

I've never been a professional baseball player, so I have no idea, but it seems like the pitchers who do throw retaliatory pitches do so out of their own free will, and are never instructed to take action.

That having been said, it also seems like every pitcher knows when he should do the deed, it's just a matter of if he does. It almost always seems like if he actually goes through with it, he gains a lot of respect in his clubhouse.

The only crime in all of this is when the pitcher has to pretend to have done it on accident in post game interviews so he won't get suspended, even though everyone in the stadium knows it was on purpose. I really love it when the pitcher says, "Yeah I had to do something, so I took care of business."

I would be really sad if baseball started to really crack down on retaliations. If they did, you wouldn't get moments like this: