Catcher has always been one of the most physically demanding positions in the MLB. From squatting down to receive every pitch to collisions at home plate, catchers know they will have more stress on their body than any other position player in baseball.
Yet somehow in the past year the San Francisco Giants World Series title turned Buster Posey into Tom Brady.
When Buster Posey made a poor attempt to block the plate without the baseball, Scott Cousins ran threw him on his way to scoring the winning run. On the play, Posey got caught in an awkward position and ended up breaking his leg.
Along with being blasted by just about everyone in the San Francisco Giants organization, Scott Cousins is now receiving death threats for playing hard.
In a season that has already seen a fan hospitalized for the team he roots for (a Giants fan, no less) and a pitching coach suspended for threatening to break someone’s teeth Giants fans somehow managed to overreact to a situation more than anyone else.
While baseball holds a special place in many people’s hearts, it is just a game at the end of the day. To threaten a players life because of a certain play (and a completely legal play at that) is just insane.
And if you thought the Giants organization would react with more class than their fans, you’re wrong.
Posey and his agent have already started whining to the MLB about rule changes. They claim that catchers need to be protected.
However, there are already rules in place to prevent things like this from happening. The official term is obstruction, which is when a player attempts to block the base without controlling the ball.
Giants General Manager Brian Sabean, who has witnessed his own team run over catchers many times (Pablo Sandoval took out Ryan Doumit last year), has completely lost his mind about the situation. Despite witnessing many of these hits in the past he just now decided that catchers aren’t protected enough.
Sabean went as far as to say that he would be happy if Cousins never played in the MLB again, and congratulated Buster Posey on being a jerk and not accepting Cousins apology.
Last year, the Giants organization and players showed a ton of class when halting their NLDS celebration to congratulate Bobby Cox. This year, the Giants are acting like a group of five year olds who want to blame everyone else for something that is their fault.
In the end, former catcher Mike Billmeyer summed the situation up best, “I think it’s just part of the game. And I’ll be honest with you. He’s the cleanup hitter in their lineup. I’m not sure they’re talking about it day in and day out if it’s the backup catcher. If it was Eli Whiteside or Dane Sardinha or Brian Schneider, I don’t think they’d talk about it.”
Used with permission of the author.
Along with contributing to Sports Climax, Brett Kettyle is the Atlanta Braves Community Leader on Bleacher Report and maintains a Braves column for MTR Media. Follow Brett on Twitter.
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