Nov 11
17
Caught On Tape: Crazy Baseball Fight
I got to cover a lot of cool events this year as a sportscaster in Spokane, Washington. I was with the Gonzaga men’s basketball team as they travelled to Denver for the NCAA Tournament, I saw the Eastern Washington football team win the FCS national championship first-hand in Texas, on top of many other amazing games. With all of the good, there has to be some bad. This baseball fight is one of those negative events, but it also proved to be one of the wildest things I’ve ever covered:
This crazy brawl happened on July 11th in a game between the Spokane Indians and Vancouver Canadians. I’ve seen hundreds of baseball fights by now, but this easily one of the craziest baseball fights I’ve ever seen — and it happened in my own backyard.
Video the melee quickly spread all over the country. We received calls from ESPN, MLB Network, CBS News, and many others looking for the goods (as they say, “If it bleeds, it leads”). Our video of the baseball fight also appeared on websites all over the globe (CBS even posted our video on their YouTube channel). It wasn’t just the raw video of the brawl that people posted either. The clip of me covering the fight on our newscast was also plastered on the world wide web. I got a bunch of phone calls from friends saying that they saw video of me online.
As a result of the baseball fight, the Northwest League suspended seven players and handed out a record 51 fines. The coaches and franchises walked away unscathed though (aside from a ding to their reputation). The Spokane Indians even issued an apology to the city and started a community sportsmanship award/fund with the fines collected for the brawl (probably the only positive thing to come out of this melee).
For those of you who are wondering, the Spokane Indians are the minor league affiliate of the Texas Rangers and the Vancouver Canadians are the affiliate for the Toronto Blue Jays. On top of the suspensions handed out by the Northwest League, the Rangers also suspended pitcher Matt West an additional four-games (to make it ten total) for his involvement in the brawl. He sucker-punched two Vancouver players during the scuffle, including the guy you see on the ground and checking his teeth at the :42 mark of the attached video.
I would love to know what you think about this crazy baseball fight. You can leave a comment below, email me at tim@timlewissports.com, find me on Twitter @lewissports, or connect with me on Facebook. You can also watch more of my video on the Tim Lewis Sports channel on YouTube.
