Fighting on Nationals' television

Major League Baseball dominates access to video images of their baseball games — you simply aren't going to find them on your youtubes and what have you — so feel free to go to the league site and watch the fracas from last night.  I just heard Tim Kurkjian (ESPN baseball analyst) say this about Nyjer Morgan (baseball player, apparently a bit of a dipshit, who launched the brawl):

Somebody needs to have another long chat with this kid to let him know, don't lose your aggressiveness and your intensity, but you've got to control it better than you have lately.

MLB likes this guy with the nice smile

Uh, huh. This kid? Nyjer Morgan is thirty years old. Thur-tee! Napoleon had invaded Egypt before hitting that milestone. Even I don't get referred to as a "kid" anymore, and I can't even see 30 on the horizon (that last part isn't true, I acutely feel time's footslog every. single. god. damned. day.).

Morgan is not a very good baseball player. It is entirely possible that his current streak of careening craziness is being steered by the looming demise of his playing career — that's mostly speculative. At 30, he has only played 322 MLB games — that is ever so slightly less than two full seasons, not even close to enough to get the good pension. In that time, he's been a very bad hitter but a good defensive asset in the outfield. However, regarding his defense, baseball's advanced fielding metrics require statistically significant sample sizes — he's not there yet, so it's hard to say how good he is. Defining how well a guy plays defense is quite difficult: somewhere between a boatload and an ass ton of variables must be sorted through. Last year his UZR/150 (if you don't know, you better ax someone) was stellar, but again, it was in a statistically less than strong sample size. This year, those fielding numbers are merely average and since he can't hit a lick, he's well on his way to being dispensable.

MLB not as fond of this guy (same guy) slamming his glove
to the ground in the middle of the game

I'm curious to see what Baseball does here.  On one hand, some black American ballplayers have voiced a sense of disenfranchisment this past year, and it may be that Baseball doesn't want to rebrand themselves as an organization that treats black men unfairly. On the other, Morgan is projecting the stereotypcial characteristics of the sort (angry, violent black man) that cause sports commissioners to crap their pants as they contemplate the image and marketability of their product. When it comes to handing down suspensions for "bad" behavior, the four major American team sports are a mess (see Adam Pacman Jones v Ben Roethlisberger as case A in the hilarity of the process).

Stay tuned and remember: stay aggressive and intense (the fans like it), but be in control too (the advertisers sorta like that).