A benches-clearing brawl broke out between two minor league baseball teams. Just like nearly every baseball fight of the past century, it started with a perceived slight. After Jose Siri of the Dayton Dragons stole a base he thought West Michigan Whitecaps shortstop Daniel Pinero was out of line and stepped on his ankle.
As you can see in the video there is a slight step but it’s very unclear if the ankle step was malicious or not, and I’d be inclined to say there was nothing malicious about it at all. Tensions were high, and that erupted into an all out brawl with both benches clearing, helmets getting tossed, and punches thrown all willy nilly.
Eduardo Jimenez of the Western Michigan Whitecaps even wound up and threw a fucking baseball at an opposing team’s player (Jesse Stallings). Sure, we all laughed at Bryce Harper’s inability to throw a baseball helmet last weekend when he charged the mound but there really isn’t anything funny about a pro baseball player throwing a baseball at full strength and hitting someone. That’s a move that could cause some SERIOUS damage depending on where the ball lands. It could easily shatter the bones in someone’s face. Thankfully, the ball only hit the opposing player in the arm and not the face.
It’s easy to miss that player throwing the baseball during the fight so you can see it here in animated GIF on repeat to really get a sense of how dangerous it was:
In response to this crazy minor league baseball brawl the Midwest League president Richard Nussbaum is reviewing it and will be dolling out punishments as he sees fit. Jose Siri and Daniel Piniero, the two players that initiated the brawl, were ejected from the game according to Chris Chavez of Sports Illustrated.