The comment on playing Philadelphia is funny, but Hamels was pissed at Harper for getting calls like a vet without earning it; this is obviously not the case with Lawrie.

I’m ordinarily of the “you pay the time for doing the crime” ilk, and in this case I think the suspension is spot on! Lawrie did lose control, that’s his fault and he got suspended for it, but the overall situation IS NOT his fault.

If you look at the replay he clearly did not throw the helmet on a direct line between him and the umpire. In fact I think the direction was toward the 3B dugout, so my take is he wasn’t aiming at the umpire. The fact that it bounced into the umpire is unfortunate, this is why he’s getting the suspension. He is not a punk, just young and dumb, and is likely to learn from this. At least I hope so.

That was a crap call by the umpire, I think he purposefully called that 3rd strike because Lawrie took off down the line on the “called” second strike and was clearly pissed when he went back to batters box. He INJECTED himself into the outcome of the game. That doesn’t mean that Toronto wins, but it does mean the get a base runner with only one out, instead of the way it turned out.

This, IMHO, is another reason to use technology to make the game better. I don’t think balls and strikes should be called by a machine, but you sure as hell can use the technology to grade the umpires on their performance. This, again IMHO, will more likely dissuade umpires from making calls based on their emotions on which that third strike call was surely based. Even I could see w/o Foxtrax that both the 2nd and 3rd strikes were balls.

Was Lawrie wrong? Yes! Was the umpire wrong, U BETCHUR ASS!!! …and that is, in this case, the bigger infraction, but he’s sure as hell not going to have to pay for his wrong doing!!!!

When this happens, it is not something to be celebrated. In fact, those involved should be charged and punished just as with any other similar crime. Yet it should be asked what drove that person to their actions, and what changes should be made to fix the underlying problems?

Instead of simply turning the vitriol from one criminal to another, we should look to punish and fix at the same time.

Lawrie should have been suspended, and likely longer than four games. Even if he didn’t truly intend to hit the umpire with his helmet (and honestly, I don’t believe for a second that he meant for anything other than simply to slam his helmet onto the turf) that action and his overall reaction deserve punishment. However, turning this into just an attack on Lawrie ignores the problem baseball has with the discipline of umpires. I can say that I have very little regard for them both individually and as a group, and the actions (or apparent inactions) of Major League Baseball to protect their integrity only backfire and bring more criticism upon the profession. The use of the Internet and other advanced technology only makes criticism easier and more obvious.

So while we rightfully chastise Brett Lawrie for his mistakes, we need to rightfully chastise the umpire for his. To do otherwise only makes the underlying problem worse, and may lead to further terrible incidents in the future.

A pitcher intentionally throws a 92mph fastball squarely at a batter, admits to it, and he get a 5 games suspension with a wink.

Seems fair. MLB is certainly on top of things.

Everyone / everything has a breaking point. What will it take for MLB to act?

I’ll start feeling sympathy for umpires once MLB starts addressing the horrible job some of these folks do day in and day out.

These types of issues are deep rooted in MLB. In no other sport are you allowed to sit there and yell at the official. In the MLB you can yell and more than likely not get tossed unless you take it too far. Instead of letting the players and managers go ape shit and eventually run into these situations, stop it before it gets too far. Take it like the NBA with the warning/technicals before ejections.

“It could have bounced anywhere,” you say, which I suppose is true. Given the circumstances, “anywhere” was pretty likely to be “into the umpire,” it’s not as if he threw it and had it take some wild carom off a wall and into Miller, it was spiked about a foot away and the most likely direction for it to take upon landing was into the man.

Throwing a helmet at the ground and having it hit the umpire when it could have bounced anywhere is worse than spitting at an official and making physical contact? Physical contact alone is worse let alone the act of degrading a human by spitting on them.

Getting the flashy hits are not what professionals are about. Those are amateurs who know not what they write.

Cole Hamels throws at a guy just like Lawrie: Young, brash, excitable, fun…probably a little too fun for 91 year old Pouliosis the idiot blog writer, and he gets a day off….and this is light punishment?

tell me, what’s more dangerous, throwing a hardball at a guy or bouncing a helmet at an idiot ump who made terrible calls all game?

do u even watch baseball? clown.

What Lawrie’s tantrum has to do with the American Revolution is beyond me, but maybe that teach that part of history a little differently north of the border.

I don’t think the umpire calls are the issue at all, nor do I think that citing Lawrie’s ultra competitive nature in any way exonerates him or diminishes his culpability. I don’t even think intention is the issue-that he did not mean to hit the umpire. In his fury, he hurled an object near another person. That is criminal behavior. The 4 game suspension is a joke.

Incidentally, some people are referring to Delmon’s bat throwing incident as comparable. At the time, while I would not claim the act as absolute evidence of his bad character, I had no problem with the 50 game suspension. I do not claim Lawry is a bad person based on this meltdown, but what he did was reprehensible and requires a severe penalty.

This notion that justified anger also justifies-or mitigates- a violent reaction is absurd. It is no more legitimate in a game than it would be in an office or on a sidewalk.

What about Molina only getting 5 games for bumping and spitting at an ump? I can’t believe what I’m reading right now. I thought this was a professional website. Not a website that has personal vendetta’s running.