iStockphoto / gyro
In hockey, fighting is an accepted part of the game. In baseball, there’s no penalty box but it’s within the unwritten rules that fighting is accepted in certain situations, most often retaliatory.
Oklahoma Christian School and Bethel High School are two schools in the greater Oklahoma City area that faced off last weekend in the Oklahoma HS baseball playoffs. Oklahoma Christian was 26-9 this season (10-1 at home) and then went on to beat Bethel 6-5 and 5-2 on May 5th and 7th, respectively.
This booted Bethel from the playoffs as Oklahoma Christian advanced to the regional finals. It was those two bitter defeats that sparked the violence below.
After Sunday’s 5-2 win, Grayson Weir of Outkick writes that ‘bad blood was spilled‘ after Oklahoma Christian’s catcher got sucker punched during the ceremonial handshake line.
You can see for yourself how unexpected the sucker punch was in this clip that’s started going viral on Twitter:
— @OLDROWVIRAL (@calicocutpant) May 8, 2023
That person repeating “what happened” in the background is all of us wondering what went down before this.
Harkening back to the above and the normalization of fighting in baseball, this incident is anything but normal.
Typically, when punches are thrown in baseball it’s a direct result of a pitcher hitting a batter with a pitch. More often than not, the fight erupts when it’s retaliatory that the batter getting is plunked.
To see something like this, with a sucker punch blindsiding a player during the handshake line, that’s extremely atypical of normal baseball brouhahas.
The Oklahoma Christian Baseball team will now advance to the Class 3A championship tournament where they’ll face Spiro. Should they advance they’ll face the winner of the Perry v Cascia Hall bracket.
The tournament moves fast. The next games, should they win out, are scheduled for May 11, 12, and 13 at the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark.