Morrissey: A fight’s all right in baseball

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

I’m here to defend the sorely misunderstood dugout skirmish and sing the praises of the cleansing clubhouse dust-up.

I’m here to say that, yes, sometimes violence is the answer, as long as we’re not talking about dugout war criminal Carlos Zambrano.

Altercations of the sort we saw last week between Cubs teammates Carlos Silva and Aramis Ramirez happen in baseball. No matter what we on the outside think of a fight between teammates, the people on the inside of that macho world usually think of it as no big deal and, often, as a good thing.

The behavior that would spawn a million lawsuits away from the clubhouse is in baseball considered a refreshing breeze that can bring a new level of understanding among teammates and, perhaps, reverse a team’s fortunes.

OK, maybe the fact that the Silva-Ramirez fight happened in the fourth spring-training game is a bit early for bridge-building through animosity.

But is there any room left in the world for conflict and confrontation that doesn’t lead to anger-management counseling?

Is there a place remaining where people can give in to the worse angels of their nature? OK, besides at Northwestern?

Blame it on emotions

Disagreements happen frequently in sports, often leading to harsh words and sometimes to physical responses. When a TV camera catches a manager and a player screaming in each other’s faces, we can’t help but think something terrible is happening, with the damage quite possibly being irreversible. And when the manager and the player later say it was simply emotions getting the best of them in a pressure-filled moment, we have a hard time believing them. But oftentimes it’s true.

Baseball players aren’t exaggerating when they say conflicts occur periodically during a season and that we just happened to see the one caught by cameras.

“I can’t think of a team it didn’t happen to,’’ said former Cubs outfielder Todd Hollandsworth, who played for eight clubs over 12 seasons. “If it didn’t happen, that team probably didn’t care very much. If it didn’t happen, that, to me, was a show of no team. They show up, put in the time and just get out of there.

“Guys typically care. It’s virtually impossible to spend 16 hours a day, seven days a week for eight months without there being conflict. These things happen. It’s just that the media is not privy to most of it.’’

Most of us don’t live our lives at the fever pitch baseball players do. Adrenaline over a 162-game season is bound to spill over. Stress needs a release.

When Stan from Accounts Payable bugs us, we grumble under our breath and go take a coffee break. When Aramis from Third Base makes an error, there’s a possibility a teammate might go off. In baseball, you don’t have to be in a car to experience road-rage symptoms.

The errors of their ways

Silva scuffled with Ramirez after the infielder and two other Cubs made errors in the first inning of an exhibition game. Silva gave up two home runs in the inning, which he obviously believed were aided and abetted by the errors.

These things happen in baseball.

In 2002, Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, two of the testiest people you’d ever want to meet, went at it in the Giants’ dugout. There had been tension building between the two for months, and it led to a skirmish that teammates eventually broke up. It made the pair confront their issues with each other and realize that, even though they didn’t like each other, they had to play together. It helped the team in the long run, a run that took the Giants to the World Series.

Kent later called the dust-up with Bonds “no big deal.’’

“Add this to the half-dozen times we’ve done it before,” he said.

One of the best things about baseball is that if someone has a problem with you, you’re eventually going to hear about it. If there is a confrontation, the important thing is for the manager or the rest of the team to deal with it right away, Hollandsworth said.

The Cubs had a team meeting the day after the Silva-Ramirez fight.

‘‘Sometimes a little revolt’s not bad,’’ Cubs manager Mike Quade said. “I’m glad people were pissed off. But we need to channel that anger at the opposition and within ourselves. And that’s all.’’

I’ve excluded Zambrano because he’s his own category. He’s a serial smasher of Gatorade dispensers and a recidivist dugout exploder. He needs to stop that stuff. On the other hand, there’s a small voice in my head saying, “Yes, but didn’t he go 8-0 after his nasty altercation with Derrek Lee last year?’’

Sometimes the best way for ballplayers to get a point across is chin to chin. Is this a Neanderthal approach to communication? I prefer the term ‘‘age-old approach.’’ It’s quainter that way.

Violence almost never is the answer, kids. Unless you’re a major-league ballplayer, your team needs help and that incompetent knucklehead over there is really irritating you.