Cardinals and Reds offer tips on fighting like a man

The Cardinals and Reds have given their best efforts over the last two nights to ensure everyone understands the NL Central division is no longer a men’s rec softball league. They wanted to establish themselves as a fight club instead. So, they are now giving tips on how to fight like a man.

1. Trash talk.
Rant about how much you hate the guys on other team. They need to know you would beat them playing on only one leg. Call them names. Then follow up your trash talk by going 0-for-5. Make sure the ball doesn’t even leave the infield.

2. Pick on the guy from your own team who is having one of the worst years of his career.
Make sure the television cameras catch you dragging him down into the dugout tunnel. Berate and humiliate him in front of the cameras because there’s really no other way to address something that’s bothering you. Also, threaten him by informing him that if he blinks, speaks or moves you will show him all your tattoos.

3. Let issues carry over to the next day.
During the first inning of the game make sure the ballplayer who started everything in the first place gives a “friendly” tap on the shin guards of the opposing team’s catcher. This will help everyone remember all the trash talk you said the day before.

4. Start one of the biggest bench-clearing brawls of the year.
Have every player, manager, coach and interpreter on the field. One of the starting pitchers should start kicking and using his metal spikes to really hurt someone. It should be mentioned at this point it will get confusing as to who is on your side. This can be especially challenging for a team like the Cardinals. When the opposing team signs any ex-Cardinal alive and you end up in an angry scrum you might not remember who you should be yelling at.

5. Crawl out of the scrum on your hands and knees.
If you start off in the scrum protecting one of your best pitchers from getting hurt and somehow you happen to end up on the bottom of the pile, crawl out quickly on your hands and knees. You started out real cool, so don’t worry about what it will look like when you emerge from the pile through another teammate’s legs. Just get the hell out of there, and when you do, grab your hat and pretend no one saw you crawling around.


19 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jim C
13 years ago

Nice. Don’t forget that, after you’ve talked all that trash, completely stink the joint out and lead your team to three straight home defeats. We need a great baseball brawl again. The last really good fight was between the Yankees and the Red Sox, of course, in 2003, and there was a great one between the Yankees and Orioles in, I think, 1998.

Bobby Mueller
13 years ago

Hey, who was the teammate having the terrible year mentioned in #2?

Anna McDonald
13 years ago

Brendan Ryan. Of course, the last few weeks have been better for him but you have to feel sorry for the guy. He’s a key player for the Cardinals.

DLeaberry
13 years ago

Johnny Cueto should be suspended for 30 days for kicking with his spikes like a little girl.

Jim C
13 years ago

I see no reason to insult little girls here. Let’s try to keep this discourse reasonable.

Anna McDonald
13 years ago

Insulting girls in baseball sometimes has positive results, as long as the boy is willing to walk the runway in a swimming suit.  (i.e. The Nationals Miguel Batista and Miss Iowa episode a few weeks ago)

Mark S
13 years ago

This was quite amusing.  And to the point.

This I say as a Cardinals fan…

OldMoney
13 years ago

Why should Mr. Cueto be suspended for 30 games? He was protecting himself when he was pushed up over the side of the wall and into the net. Self Defense is perfectly legal. LaRue charged him and he protected himself. Also, Mr. Molina should be suspended for at least 5 games. After Phillips walked away and took a pratice swing after the tap it should have been over. Molina got up in Phillips face and told him “you don’t say hi to me.” What a turd.

PG
13 years ago

“Nice. Don’t forget that, after you’ve talked all that trash, completely stink the joint out and lead your team to three straight home defeats. We need a great baseball brawl again. The last really good fight was between the Yankees and the Red Sox, of course, in 2003, and there was a great one between the Yankees and Orioles in, I think, 1998. “

White Sox @ Tigers in 2000 is still the best brawl of the decade. All 7 of them (or however many there were).

BB fan
13 years ago

Oldmoney are you stupid or what?? Cueto could have very easily put LaRue’s eye(s) out kicking him in the face with metal spikes. What a moron!! How would you like it if one of your guys got kicked in the face by spikes?? HUH??? I watched the whole thing and Cueto may have been shoved to the fence but so was everyone else. He just reacted like a school girl and started kicking violently. Suspend Molina you say for sticking up for his team. Remember it was your idiot player Phillips that started this whole mess. What he had to say was absolutely stupid and unprofessional like. Molina had every right to tell him off after he acted like it was ok to talk smack like that and then tap him on the legs with his bat. What a jerk!!

Aces
13 years ago

OldMoney is an idiot.  Have you ever had a mob of people push you forward?  It’s kind of hard to push back 50 people who keep pushing you forward, ask Carpenter.  There are so many things wrong with what you posted I won’t even try to explain them to you.

CircleChange11
13 years ago

Hold up. So, Evan Longoria is a national treasure for confronting BJ Upton’s lack of hustle, standing up for hard working Americans everywhere … but Chris Carpenter belittled a struggling opponent.

Give. Me. A. Break.

At the major league level, in probably THE most important series of the year, the Cardinals MOST important defensive player …

[1] Brought the wrong glove to his position.
[2] For some reason, was breaking toward the bag, fudging with the runner, as the batter hit the ball exactly where Ryan should have been.

Carpenter was likely saying, in a colorful way, “Get your head out of your ass”.

That’s what a team leader does. Ryan is lucky that CC29 pulled him aside in the dugout, instead of giving him the business in front of the crowd (in a road game no less).

We need to get past this naive fan perspective that player’s don;t say anything to each other. That’s bull. Go play an individual sport or a sport where it’s all roses and fuzziness, if that’s what you prefer and expect.

TLR is an irritating fellow. Carpenter is a red ass. I get it. Both, however, are completely right. You don’t kick with spikes and not get suspended. You also don;t ignore two major little-leaguespque mistakes that could have cost the team. Carpenter wasn’t yelling as his teammate for something that was carpenter’s fault (ala, Zambrano). CC29 was doing a team leader’s job.

Brandon Phillips will be given “mad respect” for ‘standing up to the cardinals’, and everyone will forget that he did nothing in the game and the cards swept the series. But, oh that does BPhil have him some grit. (Note: I really like Phillips, even as a Cardinals fan, I’m being sarcastic o the views of the common fan).

Jim C
13 years ago

As to the business between Ryan and Carpenter, it was Carpenter’s fault. As someone who pitched in school, and for 16 years in amateur leagues, if you look ar a runner, and see one of your infielders is birddogging him, you don’t make your pitch until the fielder is at least halfway back to his normal position. If Carpenter wasn’t paying attention to where Ryan was when he threw that pitch, that’s his fault, not Ryan’s. Don’t throw the pitch until you, and your fielders, are ready. Every pitcher knows that. Carpenter just wanted a scapegoat for his own mistake. I agree with the rest of your comments.

DLeaberry
13 years ago

Molina and Phillips deserve suspensions with Molina’s being longer.  But what Cueto did was alleycat fighting.

CircleChange11
13 years ago

I pitched in college, and currently coach HS, JH, and travel ball pitchers … and I don’t agree that the P always have to wait for the fielder’s to move toward their position. It creates a big distraction for the pitcher. Now his mind is obligated to keeping track of the placement and timing of the fielder? The only thing a P does not do is throw a pitch as the fielder is moving TOWARD a base. Then they either have to pause, step off, or throw to second.

The fielder operates off the pitcher at the higher levels. Again, you don;t want your pitcher to have to change what they are doing because the fielders are jacking around with runners. If you’re gonna pick him off, then do so. If not, field your position.

My MAIN gripe was that Ryan was farting around with the runner. Why? Was he really going to take 3rd? He was screwing around with something that might be the 7th highest priority, and failed to accomplish the highest priority. That’s what Carp was mad about.

Mark S
13 years ago

It appears that Cueto got a week off (7 games) and Tony and Dusty both have a couple days off and could spend some time fishing together…because they don’t hate each other and respect each other y’know….

Fines all around for Phillips, Molina, Carpenter and Russ Springer (for coming onto the field whilst on the DL).

timb
13 years ago

Carpenter’s a prick who took a confrontation that was over and turned into an almost brawl with his over-hyped mouth.

Dude should just pitch and stop complaining about “slick balls” and wrong gloves.  He’s pretty dang good at the former after all. 

Is trying to be the second coming of Curt Schilling?  ‘Cause the world does NOT need another Curt Schilling

CircleChange11
13 years ago

They all should stop complaining and play ball, right?

I find it weird that Carpenter is the one taking all the heat on this one.

Wasn’t he like the 4th person, in the sequence of events, to say some stupid stuff that contributed to the fray.

Why isn’t everyone telling Brandon Phillips to just “shut up and try to win one game”? The guy that started all the stuff, produced nothing, team got swept, and then everyone is jumping all over the other team’s pitcher for “escalating” the situation.

My instinct is telling me that no one is calling Phillips out because then you have to spend the rest of the day defending the situation of you not being a racist, but I’m hoping I’m wrong about that.

Not surprisingly when you run your mouth about the other team to the public, the other team’s not real excited about it. When you come to the park the next day, in a tense series, and start doing some cute crap … something’s going to happen. Let’s stop acting like these guys did anything different than we would have done, or that we would somehow be more dignified and rational in a heated moment.

One way to shut a guy up is to beat him.

Mark S
13 years ago

I would have criticized Phillips, but I thought the stupidity of his actions that increased the tensions of this three game series was very self-evident.

Why didn’t his teammates tell him to sit down and shut up?  Why did Dusty Baker give a half-assed apology/explanation that came close but didn’t quite condone Phillips attitude?

Brandon Phillips silly comments and sophomoric behavior were very self-evident.  further comment shouldn’t have been needed, to be quite honest. 

And the Cardinals kinda/sorta shut him up by kicking the Reds all over the Great American Ballpark.