The Law of the Headhunter
Depending on your point of view, one of the more celebrated or ignominious parts of the game of baseball is the headhunter, perhaps most recently embodied in the person of Vicente Padilla. There have been others, though. Armando Benitez was, in his day, notorious for throwing chin music — and sometimes more than that.
Throwing a pitch at a batter intentionally is a violation of Major League Baseball Rule 6.02(c)(9) (Rule 8.02(d)). The comment to that Rule states that “[t]o pitch at a batter’s head is unsportsmanlike and highly dangerous. It should be — and is — condemned by everybody. Umpires should act without hesitation in enforcement of this rule.” Despite that strong language, headhunting is not a violation of baseball’s unwritten rules. Therefore, it keeps happening.
Whatever virtues one might find in the practice, it’s nevertheless obvious that headhunting can be really dangerous. Former Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman notably died after being struck in the head. Tony Conigliaro’s career — and life — was altered dramatically by a beaning in his age-22 season. Even throwing at a batter unintentionally can have devastating consequences, as we saw with Giancarlo Stanton after he was hit by Mike Fiers.
But the presence of headhunting in the game raises an interesting question — namely, what legal recourse, if any, does a batter have against a pitcher who throws at him intentionally?
Let’s start with some basic definitions to help us out here. Today we’ll be talking about “assault” and “battery,” two terms that get thrown around a lot in popular culture but actually have pretty specific legal meanings.
Most people think assault and battery are the same thing, but they’re actually very different. (For our purposes, there’s not much difference between the criminal and civil versions of the two charges — either for assault or battery). Battery is a (1) harmful bodily contact, (2) with intent to cause that bodily contact, and (3) without consent. Assault is apprehension of that intentional harmful bodily contact. In other words, actual physical contact isn’t necessary for an assault charge, whereas it is necessary to qualify as battery. Some people just call assault “attempted battery,” but that’s not exactly right; it’s a little more complicated than that. Assault and battery vary a bit from state to state, and are creatures of state law like this one.
How does this apply to baseball? Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario, one in which Cole Hamels is on the mound and Bryce Harper at bat. Hamels decides to intentionally hit Harper. Maybe Hamels didn’t like Harper’s hair that day. Maybe his cologne annoyed him. Maybe Harper pimped a home-run trot earlier. It doesn’t really matter; the point is, we have Hamels and Harper facing off, and Hamels has decided to throw a fastball at him. As the fastball approaches Harper, Hamels is assaulting him — Harper is now in apprehension of an imminent harmful bodily contact. And then, when the ball makes contact with Harper, the battery is complete. Harper sues Hamels, wins money, end of story.
Right?
Well, not so much. Previously, in the context of netting and baseball, we discussed the doctrine of “assumption of the risk.” As a quick refresher, “assumption of the risk” is a doctrine in Chapter 17A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts that says that when an individual engages in an act with knowledge of a danger, they assume the risk of that danger. As it turns out, assumption of the risk shows up in lots of different baseball contexts, and not just protective netting. In this case, assumption of the risk means that, when a player steps into the batter’s box, that player assumes the risk that a pitcher might throw at him, even intentionally.
The Supreme Court of California is responsible for that rule, the result of a case called Avila v. Citrus Community College District. The Avila Court said that “[b]eing intentionally hit is likewise an inherent risk of the sport, . . . Pitchers intentionally throw at batters to disrupt a batter’s timing or back him away from home plate, to retaliate after a teammate has been hit, or to punish a batter for having hit a home run.” In other words, the Avila court provided as its list of reasons why intentionally throwing at a batter should be legal all of the unwritten rules of beanballs. So, from a legal perspective, throwing at someone’s head is “condemned by everybody” except the California Supreme Court.
*It’s therefore not correct anymore, I suppose, to say they are unwritten rules. They’re written in Avila, which means that they may not be in the Rulebook, but they are enshrined in case law. Make of that what you will.
Now, it seems odd at first glance that a court would say that there is an inherent risk in being intentionally hit by a baseball when it’s against the rules. But the Avila court acknowledged that: “It is true that intentionally throwing at a batter is forbidden by the rules of baseball.” However, the Avila court was concerned that imposing legal liability for hitting batters intentionally would change the game of baseball, including in its decision the following passage:
“Even when a participant’s conduct violates a rule of the game and may subject the violator to internal sanctions prescribed by the sport itself, imposition of legal liability for such conduct might well alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule.”
Ultimately, the result is that the Avila court has insulated headhunters from legal liability. And the Avila decision is now the majority rule in the United States.
Now, interestingly, that same Supreme Court of California ruled the very next year in a case called Shin v. Ahn that a person can be held liable for recklessly hitting somebody with a golf ball, even if it’s not intentional. So the current state of the law is that getting hit with a golf ball unintentionally (albeit recklessly) can give rise to liability, but being hit intentionally by a baseball can’t. And that’s why Bryce Harper can’t sue Cole Hamels in our hypothetical.
One last thing: these rules don’t necessarily apply to brawls. More on that in a later post.
Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
Why the difference between golf ball and baseball? Is it purely the assumed risk of the batter/pitcher confrontation versus the lack of perceived risk of golfing?
I haven’t read the case, but the argument I’d make is that there’s a standard of care. For example, if it’s a par 3 and the people in front of you are still on the green, it’s reckless to tee off knowing that you’re liable to hit someone, and the people in front of you have a reasonable expectation that you’re going to wait.
In Avila, the defendant was following the rules of the game. In Shin, the defendant was not. The author doesn’t tell you that, though, because she wants to imply that it’s the difference in type of sports that was dispositive.
The rules of the game say you can’t throw at batters intentionally, so that’s not the difference.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? You know very well, and in fact say so in your article, that we are talking about the unwritten rules and expectations of the game as well as written rules.
What exactly are you implying when you say that “she wants to imply that it’s the difference in type of sports that was dispositive.”?
Also, if you don’t specify the unwritten part, when you say rules it just sounds like you’re talking about the actual rules.
Sounds like you’re the obtuse one… straight from the article AND rulebook:
Throwing a pitch at a batter intentionally is a violation of Major League Baseball Rule 6.02(c)(9) (Rule 8.02(d)).
So no, it isn’t an unwritten rule. It’s a written rule not to throw intentionally at someone. So in Avila, the rules were broken.
There are so many problems with making the comparison of these two cases in my opinion:
1. The rules say that you can’t throw at a batter’s head intentionally, but it is impossible to prove that someone did something intentionally unless they admit it (obviously). The court case doesn’t even dwell in these waters as far as I can tell because they stick with what would happen if the pitch was presumed intentional.
2. “vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule,” is a very important part of the reasoning behind the Avila case. What if a pitcher wants to pitch up and in, but not “bean” the batter and instead they end up missing their spot and hitting the head? From the batter’s perspective in this accidental scenario, they could very well argue both negligence and intentionality, and the pitcher would not be able to prove otherwise, which SURELY does prevent “vigorous engage[ment].” The court simply wants to make sure that a pitcher is not AFRAID to hit the batter the head even by accident for fear of legal consequences because as mentioned, intentionality is impossible to prove.
3. The golf circumstances prevent no such limiting factor on the competitiveness of the game like the baseball one does. There is no such circumstance where someone should be driving with someone else on the fairway, especially after allegedly making eye contact with the person. There is no such circumstance where this limits the ability of the person driving to play the game as it is intended. If you can think of how it does, please let me know (I mean this non-sarcastically, I simply can’t think of a scenario where it would matter)
Pitching up and in, intentionally and in the sport of baseball, is totally legal within the sport (not the law). Pitching up and in, intentionally as to hit a player’s head, is not legal within the sport (not the law).
From the observer’s perspective, however, the difference between these two occurrences is totally indistinguishable. Furthermore, forcing the pitcher to take this into account from an actionable standpoint FUNDAMENTALLY alters the game even within its rules (because the pitcher would have to be afraid of not being able to prove he didn’t break the law with each pitch he or she makes, which would alter the pitcher’s decision-making process). Forcing people not to drive a golf ball while others are on the fairway does not fundamentally alter the sport of golf within its rules. That’s why the coexistence of these two cases isn’t particularly interesting.
Let me know if there’s something I’m missing though, that’s just my take after skimming over both the cases.
Dave, I think that’s a cogent way of putting it. But I’m somewhat interested in a more meta-issue: that the court feels it appropriate to prioritize the fundamental rules of baseball over people not getting hit in the head with projectiles. Society has an established interest in the latter under the Anglo-American system, but I’m not sure on what grounds it values the former at all, much less makes it superior.
At what point can you tell people what they are and aren’t allowed to do though? Should it have been illegal for Madison Bumgarner to try and do a dangerous jump on that dirtbike? How about most sports in the Winter Olympics, in which one misstep or de-railed bobsled can end a life? How about for that Austrian dude to do the Red Bull skydive from space with the Go-Pro for some cash?
The point is that when we establish liability on a pitcher based upon intention (and furthermore, potentially negligence if not intention), when a pitcher only has control of where the ball ends up to a certain point (and not very precise one at that according to Mr. Sarris), and there is still yet no way to prove what a person does or does not intend to do, the game becomes fundamentally unplayable without serious legal risk for a pitcher. If the game turns into “well, don’t even RISK hitting the batter,” then every hitter will turn into a super-Rizzo, and the de-facto strike zone will be around the size of a loaf of bread.
To a point, the hitter knows the risk they are taking and chooses to take it.
Yeah, it’s not that being intentionally hit by a baseball is legal, it’s that being intentionally hit by a baseball while standing in the batters box is legal. If Hamels negligently threw a ball 90MPH in the dugout and hit someone, he’d probably be liable. If he did the Bull Durham thing and threw at somebody outside a bar, he definitely would be.
The California Supreme Court makes that exact point in Avila. Quoting from footnote 11 (which is a footnote to the sentence that “For better or worse, being intentionally thrown at is a fundamental part and inherent risk of the sport of baseball.”):
“The conclusion that being intentionally hit by a pitch is an inherent risk of baseball extends only to situations such as that alleged here, where the hit batter is at the plate. Allegations that a pitcher intentionally hit a batter who was still in the on-deck circle, or elsewhere, would present an entirely different scenario.”
Consider it this way. There is no requirement in golf for you to hit the ball close to somebody. There is a requirement in baseball for you to throw the ball close to a competitor: either explicitly, when pitching, or implicitly, when throwing a fielded ball to attempt a play at a base, where the throw might go into the runner.
It springs from the different natures of the games. Golf is essentially individual, because you don’t have to play against anybody except whoever decided par for the course. Baseball is essentially a team sport, and you do have to compete against somebody. The differing legal opinions appear to spring from those different natures.
Right, the Avila decision as quoted was not just about traditional rules violations, it referred to rules-compliant play that shades near the violations. The court didn’t want to chill legal pitching high and inside.
It’s not clear to me what the court would have said if these facts were split — if beanballs were traditional rulebreaking but not adjacent to any significant rules-compliant play.
And what of criminal liability?
There exists in the law something called “prosecutorial discretion.” After Avila, I doubt there’s a prosecutor who would charge a pitcher with intentionally hitting a batter simply because the Supreme Court of California basically said it’s all part of the game.
There’s always a prosecutor somewhere who’s willing to overcharge if you need one.
Having been a prosecutor in NY State, I assure you I would not care what a California state court thought.
I also agree that a criminal case would be very, very unlikely. But in a fact pattern where somebody was badly injured or killed, I would think it would be worth a criminal investigation and perhaps a grand jury to compel testimony from managers and other players (probably the catcher) as to whether there was a plan to hit the batter in such a way.
NHL enforcer Marty McSorley was charged with assault when hit hit and knocked out Donald Brashear, but that game happened in Vancouver so Canadian law applied.
That could have happened in the U.S., too. What McSorley did was completely outside of the ordinary course of hockey, even as rough and tumble as it is.
There was also a high school pitcher (I think high school, could have been college) that intentionally hit a hitter that was standing behind home plate during his warm up tosses. I believe he was held criminally liable for that, again because while hitting guys who are batting is part of the game (a stupid part of the game, but still), that does not mean that you can just hit anyone at anytime on the baseball field with a baseball. Same with McSorley. Hitting guys in the leg is against the rules, but people do it. What McSorley did was just never done in hockey, so it makes sense that he would be criminally charged.
This is the only one I could find, though the charges were eventually dropped: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-11-24/sports/9911240379_1_ben-christensen-criminal-charges-rene-lachemann
I just don’t know where the line is. So you can only intentionally hit only certain people with a baseball on a baseball field and rightly expect not to be prosecuted, even though it is never permissible by the rules of baseball to throw the baseball with the intention of hitting an opposing player.
Right. It’s illegal to foul someone in basketball. Not criminal.
The claim that Avila has insulated major leaguers from civil liability is a misleading, sensationalist reporting at best, just one more episode in the long history of yellow journalism that tries to paint the court system as irrational and arbitrary. Avila is the way it is because it reflects the realities of baseball. The judiciary did not create baseball’s unwritten rules, nor should it.
And it is flat out incorrect to say that throwing at heads is condemned by everyone except the California Supreme Court. Baseball communities everywhere, aka the body that actually matters, do not condemn it and vocally espouse this unwritten code of conduct.
This seems like an overreaction – I think you’re reading some judgment into this article that I really don’t see myself.
For example, “Insulated from liability” isn’t necessarily a pejorative, it’s simply descriptive.
The article is full of misleading and incorrect statements all tending to the same conclusion: California State Courts doesn’t think throwing at heads is bad lmao. I don’t think it’s an overreaction to see this article for what it is, a lazy, sensationalist journalism that trades in accuracy for what the author believes is a cute and interesting content.
Please share the statement that is objectively incorrect.
> So, from a legal perspective, throwing at someone’s head is “condemned by everybody” except the California Supreme Court.
Now tell me if there is a jurisdiction where Avila case would’ve been decided differently. That would tell us whether “from a legal perspective,” other jurisdictions condemn headhunting unlike the California courts. Tell me also whether baseball players accept headhunting as a part of the game.
I think what the author was trying to get at is that everyone gets angry about headhunting and wishes it would stop except the court system (in this case in the form of the California court system, as the ones who decided the case). That isn’t as objectionable a statement as you’re making it out to be.
Seriously though, what is going on with your interpretation of this article? One statement that is obviously supposed to be a joke makes the article sensationalistic yellow journalism?
Not just a joke, but a direct quote from the rules of baseball.
Don’t feed the trolls. Just flag and move on.
I’d love to get a list of “baseball communities” that “vocally espouse” support for throwing at batters’ heads. In all my years (decades) of watching baseball and following baseball, I’ve never heard anyone support headhunting. Anyone that matters, that is.
Not throwing at heads but throwing at batters. “Headhunting” was an unfortunate choice of words used as a shorthand.
You know what, you’re right, that’s why when a player gets beaned he sometimes runs to the mound to give the pitcher a high five for his generally accepted conduct.
So you are saying that throwing at a batter is not an accepted conduct in baseball?
Intentionally pitching at the batter is expressly prohibited by MLB’s official rules.
Sometimes the entire teams will come out of their dugouts to mingle and chat about how great it is to see people beaning each other.
And if it goes really far the umpire will send the pitcher home from work early as a reward for his acumen at implementing unwritten rules.
(I am saying that people understand it happens but I don’t think many people view it as ‘acceptable conduct’)
The article is about headhunting, a.k.a. bean balls, a.k.a. hunting of heads, a.k.a. intentionally throwing a baseball at a hitter’s noggin. You were not made King for the Day, so you don’t get to change what the article is about to make your silly point seem less silly. And if you want to talk about hit batters generally, you might want to avoid the phrase “throwing at heads” because it might give off the impression that you are referring to throwing at heads.
Have you read any newspaper columnists?
Yes, and none have ever supported headhunting. If I’m wrong, please provide citation.
Yup – so long as the activity is part of the generally understood events/risks of a baseball game, you’re not going to get anywhere in court. This is also why you won’t see lawsuits in football for helmet to helmet hits that are both against the rules and cause a great deal of harm to the player on the receiving end. Or lawsuits in NASCAR alleging that a crash was caused by a competitor’s reckless driving.
An action has to be so far out of the gamut of the sport that no reasonable player would have foreseen it as a risk, that’s where you get to the question about brawls. Though, even there you could make the argument that they are kind of part and parcel of the game, but there’s probably a line where you’ve exited that realm, for example I’d imagine you’d end up in court if you actually attacked someone with a bat.
Important to note as well that this conversation is about assault & battery in the civil context, not the criminal context. They use the same terms but they are different animals. Specifically assumption of risk is a civil affirmative defense. I’m not aware of anyone ending up with criminal charges for on field actions, but I’ve never read anything to indicate that, if authorities *wanted* to press charges, there’s anything to stop them.
I think you will see lawsuits at some point, which makes me sad. This is what the beginning of the process looks like.
Like Happy Gilmore, and being the only guy to ever take off his skate and try to stab someone.
I don’t mind a brush-back, and I can maybe even get behind an occasional fastball to the backside but the fact that someone can hit someone in the head is completely asinine. The issue then becomes whether someone intended to hit someone in the head, which is an entirely different can of worms.
I mean, if we’re talking a civil claim, intent isn’t as much a problem as you’d think, because the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence.
You’d have to successfully argue only that more likely than not this was intentional, which is a lot easier than *proving* it was intentional in a more objective sense.
I can see OddBall’s point, but it does appear that not wanting the courts to get into deciding fine lines of intent was part of the California Supreme Court’s reasoning in Avila.
That’s my takeaway from the language in the block quote in Ms. Ring’s post that legal liability could “alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule.”
My initial reaction is always to think it’s stupid that you can legally get away with throwing a baseball at someone (even if it’s not their head), because in any other setting it would be illegal. But it would probably be way too hard to draw the line when getting hit by a ball is so obviously a possible part of the game.
Legality aside, I really think the league needs to take some steps to curb intentionally hitting people, but especially headhunting. It’s all just so stupid.
Isn’t the issue intent and how do you prove it? To impose civil (or criminal) liability for a pitcher hitting a batter the tribunal has to the prove the act was intentional and not an accident, because obviously not all (or even most) HBP are intentional.
Yeah, I agree that in most cases intent would probably be impossible to prove, especially in a criminal context. There are times, though, when players basically admit it. But they probably wouldn’t if they knew they could be legally liable.
That’s really why I think this has to be a league issue instead of a legal one. The league already disciplines players for intentionally hitting people, it’s just that the suspensions are always so short that it doesn’t really matter.
This is all moot because you are never going to be able to prove intent. Pitchers can’t hit a spot when they want to. Why would they conveniently gain superhuman abilities? I doubt anyone has ever tried to really hurt someone badly in an MLB game… well maybe back in a previous era, but not in the lawsuit era.
See my post about intent above, you just have to argue that it was more likely than not intentional.
So for example, if you get into one of those games where pitchers are clearly retaliating against each other for prior beanings, that’s evidence. If the players were barking at each other after a prior home run, that’s evidence. Maybe you don’t get as far as ‘intending to hit the person in the head’, but I’d imagine hitting the person specifically on the head is more relevant to damages than it is to the requirements for assault & battery.
If you are not headhunting then this is a non-issue. Its not a desk job. You are going to get a few bumps and bruises, which is all a HBP should amount to. I would hate to think of criminal charges related to simply getting a bruise or scuff. That is a scary direction to think about.
Oh I agree, I was mostly speaking to the question of whether or not this is all moot because you could never prove intent anyway.
Thanks for the clarification. I clearly interpret this a bit differently than many (I think) of the others.
So you’re saying pitchers just throw and hope it goes in a good location?
Yes, that is exactly what they do. Some are better than others. How do you think it works? Move the cursor using the left analog stick or are you thinking more along the lines of a text-based adventure?
You roll a d20, of course.
duh
In this scenario, Mike Trout is Sam Riegel and Matt Harvey is Wil Wheaton.
I mean.. you read this site, so I ‘d assume you understand baseball well.. but you’re wrong. Pitchers have command to throw it within a foot or even half a foot of their target. Not every time, but you’re completely wrong to think they just blindly throw and pray.
Those are your words. You are not going to drag me into this. I can assure you that reading this site doesn’t mean that you understand baseball well – all it means is that you have an Internet connection.
Fangraphs might want to consider something like LawGraphs. There are clearly two sets of readers here. I would appreciate it at least.
Perhaps giant debates in the comments section is ultimately what FG wants. I am sure it is good for engagement and ultimately clicks. Is it good for the health of the community? This is much more ganging up on a few people than a healthy debate – in some contexts this is called cyber-bullying.
Or just don’t read any that are obviously about the law. I mean, it’s not that hard to avoid. It’s not like you were tricked into reading this (and commenting on it).
And maybe posters should use common sense before posting (referencing earlier subthreads where people have idiotic ideas – like pitchers just throw and hope it ends up ok.
Yet a third possibility is that the comment section is for comments. Thanks for keeping an eye on the dissenting opinions.
How about “Law” In The Title And Sheryl Ring As The Author Graphs?
Nobody is excited by arguing about whether legal articles are interesting. Not you, not me. Just walk away to an article you like. Secretly, I don’t open a lot of the articles on this site!
I assure you that I don’t read many articles posted here. At some point, I try to read a few that sound like things I wouldn’t be interested in just to keep myself honest. If you avoid everything you don’t like, then you are actively becoming more biased. If you want to see how that plays out, then look at how the votes get distributed above. I agree with your sentiment, but there certainly are many people that come out and comment and vote on the legal articles. Every one of them seems to end in a comment war primarily fueled by those that love to talk legal implications and interpretations. I am saying that there might be enough of them to create a sub-community. I’m not mad and what I have posted has largely been attempts at being constructive. It is always interesting to see how comments are received.
But why would California case law apply to other jurisdictions? If Hamels is pitching on behalf of a Texas team against Harper in Washington DC, would it wind up in a US District Court in DC, or would it wind up in a state court (Virginia?)?
If Hamels was acting on behalf of the Rangers, wouldn’t Harper sue the Rangers ownership along with Hamels? And wouldn’t the suit wind up in a federal court?
I’m not a legal expert, so feel free take what I say with a few grains of salt. California case law doesn’t apply to other jurisdictions, but the CA decision would likely be used as an example of precedent in trials taking place elsewhere. By my understanding, existing court rulings from other trials are often persuasive.
DC has its own “state” court, which is basically the same as any of the 50 states.
The California case law would not be binding on another state’s court, but it could be persuasive. It is common for a state court’s ruling to end up being the status quo in most of the states, and the standard is still often referred to by the name of the original court case. In other words, dave t, while not professing to be an expert, is pretty much exactly on point.
If it’s a case of first impression in a particular jurisdiction, attorneys are going to go out looking for examples from other jurisdictions to make the argument that, while not binding, those precedents were well/poorly formed (depending on what side you’re on) and should be applied accordingly.
The CA case doesn’t apply to other jurisdictions, but it’s representative of the general trend across states of using the assumption of risk doctrine as a waiver of liability in the sports context. Sheryl highlighted that case because it deals with the specific instance of a baseball player being intentionally hit by the ball in the head, but there are many other examples of assumption of risk in sports: high school football players can’t sue each other for broken bones caused by illegal tackles, race car drivers can’t sue each other for causing crashes that lead to career ending injury, etc. Basically, as long as the injury happens within the boundaries and norms of the sport you’ve assumed the risk of that injury occurring and you can’t sue another participant for causing it.
And as an aside, CA law is pretty influential nationally on this particular subject with the Knight v. Jewett decision cited in the Avila case found in many tort law textbooks.
“it seems odd at first glance that a court would say that there is an inherent risk in being intentionally hit by a baseball when it’s against the rules”
It’s against the rules to hit a defenseless receiver in football above the shoulders (intentional or not) that doesn’t make it (or the potential head injuries) not an inherent risk. I don’t think something being against the rules in itself makes it not an inherent risk.
I am not a lawyer, however if a player were injured/career ended/killed and it could be proven (or probably in civil court, overwhelming evidence provided) that there was intentional, malicious intent then I would guess they could recover for damages, pain/suffering?
My little legal knowledge leads me to think “damages” will be the first and most important step (if he hits you in the shoulder and you have a nasty bruise vs. hits you in the face and makes you go partially blind and ends your career it’s a major difference) followed by proving intent…and I think both would be necessary.
Saying that headhunting is “not a violation of baseball’s unwritten rules” is just plain wrong. Padilla’s own teammates on the Rangers hated him for headhunting because it made them afraid of retaliation.
Even the unwritten rules evolve over time. This isn’t the days of Bob Feller or Bob Gibson or anyone named Bob.
We do seem to be at a historically low level of Bobs in the major leagues. A quick glance suggests that if not for Bobby Wahl throwing seven relief innings for the A’s in May we would have gone all of 2017 without a Bob or Bobby at all, perhaps for the first season in history.
Avila is a dumb decision.
Saying that playing baseball is consent to the risk of being beaned is like saying that sleeping with someone’s ex-girlfriend is consent to being murdered.
Really interesting article as always, Sheryl, but I wish you had gone further to address a few follow-up questions. For example, what scenarios might make the CA case not apply? Admission of intent? Pattern of behavior? Several near misses before a hit? Presumably a good lawyer could find a way to assert that certain elements of a given situation are different than those of the CA case, so different rules should govern. How likely is any of that?
The other side is, what legal liability does MLB itself hold if one of its players dies after getting hit in the head? For certain pitchers who have a history of multiple incidents, it can easily be argued that whatever weak discipline MLB meted out before was inadequate to deter future transgressions. But because MLB applied the punishment, it basically acknowledged the particular dangers of that player’s behavior (as opposed to a poor-control type who just hits a few guys), while not doing enough to stop it. If Padilla (to use an example from the article) headhunts and kills a player, and he has been suspended multiple times before for similar issues, why wouldn’t MLB be liable for that?
Why has no politician proposed arming teachers with baseballs?
How did a good topic get so sidetracked? Headhunting is an interesting topic that has provided some of the best drama in baseball in the last twenty years and it results in the infantile exchanges above? Headhunting or alleged headhunting has involved some of the greatest players of our generation (think Petey and Jeter, like 15 times…) and the discussion was framed on the basis of another loopy California Supreme Court decision? Sheryl gets responses- mucho props. But was this the dialogue you hoped to stimulate? Me thinks not.
Okay, cite a higher-class state Supreme Court instead?