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Baseball brawls, culture and ethnicity

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by SnarkShark, Oct 2, 2015.

  1. SnarkShark

    SnarkShark Well-Known Member

    A USA TODAY Sports study of 67 bench-clearing incidents in Major League Baseball over the past five seasons found the main antagonists hailed from different ethnic backgrounds in 87% of the cases.

    Just more than half of them - 34 - pitted white Americans against foreign-born Latinos. Another four featured white Americans and U.S.-born Latinos.

    Baseball's culture clash: Vast majority of brawls involve differing ethnicities

    I really didn't know what to make of this, then I actually thought about it. Every bench-clearing incident from the last few years that I could recall involving the team I follow was Latino vs. White.

    I find this fascinating, but also extremely troubling.
     
  2. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    I mentioned this way back early in the season on the baseball thread, but I think you see a lot of white American players reacting to Latin players who never learned or don't buy into the unwritten rules, especially when it comes to celebrating.
     
  3. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    Bomani Jones also made a good point on the radio yesterday. A generation ago when there were maybe one or two Latin players on a team they felt like they needed to conform more than today when maybe half a team might be Latin.
     
  4. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    If you don't grow up in the culture of the "unwritten rules" it is entirely possible that you don't understand or choose to honor them.
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Baseball is a really diverse sport, so it would go to figure that some significant percentage of these battles would be between two guys of different ethnicities, just by chance.
     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    You'd have to go back a lot further than a generation to find "one or two Latin players on a team."

    What I'd like here is for the great dq to look at the ethnic composition of baseball and figure out what the expectation would be that brawls would involve two people of different backgrounds. I'd think the expected frequency of those interactions would be very high.
     
  7. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Bench-clearing brawls in baseball aren't exactly new. Haven't they been around since the days when all the players were white?
     
  8. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Also -- one of the photos in the article details a fight between Carlos Quentin and Zack Greinke.

    Quentin grew up in Chula Vista, went to private high school and Stanford -- about as upper-crust as you can get. Doesn't strike me as a culture clash, strikes me as a "stop standing on the fucking plate" clash.
     
    JimmyHoward33 likes this.
  9. Stoney

    Stoney Well-Known Member

    Not only are they not new, I believe they've become rarer in recent years. Although admittedly I've no data to back it up, to my memory it sure seems like they were far more frequent (and entertaining) back in the 80s than nowadays.

    And that they usually involve different races doesn't surprise me, given the sport's current racial and cultural diversity. Doesn't strike me as much to be concerned about.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2015
  10. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    They usually involve royalty.
     
  11. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Or Cardinals. You know, the ones who wrote the book Joe Maddon didn't read.

    Must be something in the fucking water in Missouri.
     
    JC likes this.
  12. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    It is interesting that every big incident the Royals have been in this season, the main culprits on each side were Latin players from KC versus white American (or Canadian) players they beat in the playoffs last year.
     
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