Boys Will Be Boys
A guy threw a ball at another guy during this rip-snortin’ brawl at the South Bend Cubs game on Tuesday night
With every passing year, the bench-clearing brawl drifts closer to extinction. Like the hockey fight, it is simply an unsustainable tradition in today’s modern world. You can point at the PC police if you would like, but it’s year 2021 and our species should probably have evolved out of punching each other in the brains by now (especially considering we now know what punching each other in the brains does to said brains).
All that said, we still can’t help but stop and rubberneck when one of these increasingly rare brouhahas breaks out, as one did on Tuesday night between the Fort Wayne Tin Caps and South Bend Cubs. Tighten those chinstraps, kiddos. This is going to get nuts.
Honestly, incredible drama. The rain teeming down. The benches pouring onto the field. At one point a Fort Wayne player actually picks up and hurls a ball as a weapon. It’s chaos to the point where chaos starts to blur into art, and all because, um, uh, Bueller?
OK, so while we may not know full details, the whole thing starts as most of these do, with some sweet chin music. Then one of the Tin Caps said something to the Cubs’ Delvin Zinn as he was trotting home, and they got to jawing. Zinn had to be restrained, but it was too late. The detonation sequence had begun.
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In the bottom of the inning, the Tin Caps’ Brandon Hughes struck out and as he was turning back to the dugout, Cubs catcher Jake Washer said something to him. Hughes spun around, they squared up, and the next thing you both teams were on the field throwing haymakers, with Zinn trying to take on the entire Tin Cups dugout on his own Yasiel Puig-style.
The MiLB will ultimately get the last laugh here, and you can bet Zinn and whoever threw that ball are headed straight to Shawshank, but we thank all participants for their sacrifice. We haven’t seen a rip-snorter like that in way too long, and if it’s the last one we ever do, it was worth it.