Imrem: Nothing wrong with a little base-brawl
Rougned Odor threw a haymaker and a couple of days later pacifists still are decrying the ensuing brawl between Toronto and Texas.
Oh, stop it.
If the worry is that major-league behavior will trickle down to playgrounds, forget about it.
This kind trickles up from playgrounds to the majors and to saloons and to Army barracks and to myriad stops between.
When it's said that boys will be boys, baseball fights and baseball players are the definition.
My goodness, the Cubs go out in public wearing zany suits and the White Sox's second baseman goes onto the field with goggles and a mouthguard that make him look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Warrior.
Our first-place marvels might as well go all the way and participate in the occasional fisticuffs.
Come to think of it, a good time would be the Sox-Cubs series in late July.
So what if players let their emotions bleed into dislike? Hasn't baseball lapsed into too much fraternizing among opponents?
This is sports. If you can't enjoy some fist-fueled friction here, where can you?
Look, only two regrets should accompany the testiness down in Texas.
One is that the Cubs and Pirates didn't engage in a full-blown beanball battle over the weekend.
The other is that the Sox didn't demonstrate more fight - figuratively and literally - against the Yankees.
The real competition in baseball this season has been between old school and new school over the game's unwritten rules.
The Blue Jays annoyed the Rangers during last year's postseason by violating traditional etiquette.
Specifically, Jose Bautista's epic bat flip punctuated the home run that eliminated the Rangers from the playoffs.
Stagecoach purists considered it poor sportsmanship while space-age revolutionaries considered it pure fun.
Seven months later, the Rangers exacted a measure of revenge by hitting Bautista with a pitch. A few minutes later Bautista slid hard into second base, Odor punched him in the face and benches emptied.
Good stuff, it says here.
The situation developed after Nationals slugger Bryce Harper recently began a debate by declaring that baseball needs players to demonstrate more emotion on the field.
The debate's flip side, so to speak, is that players should respect opponents and act professionally.
Cubs pitcher John Lackey has become sort of a sheriff of the game, confronting opponents who ignore the baseball code.
You know what?
Each side is right and each will police the other over a long season that features short tempers.
Baseball is a seven-month drama, and every drama requires conflict.
It's OK if Harper hits a homer off Lackey, stares at the trajectory, whirlybirds his bat, glares at the pitcher and dances the Macarena around the bases.
Meanwhile, it's also OK if a couple of innings later Lackey hurls a warning shot that might get away from him and rise up around Harper's cranial area.
If a Harper shows off, that's entertainment; if a Lackey drills him, that's baseball.
Nobody says that Harper and Lackey or Bautista and Odor or any Cubs pitcher and any Pirates hitter have to like each other.
If pacifists don't appreciate the occasional dust-up, they can go listen to the church choir perform.
mimrem@dailyherald.com