Something in the water?

Lost in the hoop-la (get it? hoop? I kill me) of Paul Pierce's explosion on Thursday was the latest in a long line of Red Sox vs. Rays brawls, this one noteworthy for some first class douchebaggery from the Bosox's Coco Crisp.

The Sox OF, however, disappointed me with jerk behavior that showed forethought, but not enough to deliver us some real, actual, quality violence. Your far too obsessive video clip follows.



Now, the following quick points from this, before MLB lays down the wood with suspensions...

1) Crisp shows real innovation with the look-off move on the catcher, but he needs to extend that and go halfway down the line, then make the hard left turn. If the goal is to deceive the opponent and get a clean attack on the pitcher, go all the way.

2) If Shields had connected, I suspect he might have wound up on the DL. He had some velocity going on there.

3) In terms of relative worth to their teams, this is right up there with sending your hockey thug against someone on the opponent's top line. Shields is the Rays' #2 starter and a quality young arm; Crisp defends well but isn't much with the stick. Sox Fan, of course, will pule that Crisp is more valuable than that, especially with Ellsbury and Ortiz on the shelf, but, um, he's not. There are guys in the minor leagues that are better than Crisp.

4) What the hell is it between the Rays and Sox, you might ask? Well, it's simple... the Rays may not be all that good (this year being the exception), but they are unique in the division at not taking Boston's crap. The Sox have been plunking Yankees with abandon for years now, and the Orioles and Jays haven't, for the most part, cared enough for hardcore retaliation. The Rays, for whatever reason, have always been interested in throwing down with Boston, but not so much with anyone else in the division. It really is a Boston thing.

5) Crisp then upped the ante in postgame by talking about how the Rays were girls for the post-pile beat down, which probably earned him a few extra games in the inevitable suspension. He also, oddly, gave credit to Shields for not throwing at his head... which makes you wonder why he charged the mound, then. (What prompted this slapfight? Well, Crisp was blocked on a slide play to second, then came back later in the same game with a highly questionable rolling block takeout slide. So the HBP was kind of expected.)

6) Special kudos to Johnny Gomes, the Rays DH, who managed to pull off a Kung Fu Panda assbath on Crisp in the pile. You're a voiceover away from having a nice payday out of that, Johnny.

Needless to say, I think Crisp's a tool, and you'd have to be a hard core Sawx partisan to not see it that way. But I do wonder, being an innovative mind in regards to these things, why it's always left to the pitcher to retaliate. Couldn't the catcher do something like this...



or, if and when he gets on base, just throw to first routinely, and have the first baseman apply hard tags... or have the second baseman or short stop just throw at him on a relay to first... etc., etc.

The point is this: in MLB, everyone thinks that retaliation begins and ends with the pitcher, and I think it's bull. Just because the pitcher's the only guy with the ball here, doesn't mean that everybody else gets to sleep. Besides, you could always just have some folks go out en masse between innings. (And there's still four more weeks until NFL training camps open, and 8 until bad pre-season games...)