Grazing the Open Pages: Baseball

In this, the second edition of Grazing the Open Pages, I give you an anecdote involving the pitcher Dock Ellis, from the incomparable Roger Angell's Five Seasons:

Dock Ellis, now a Yankees but then a Pirate, decided early in the 1974 season that the Cincinnati Reds had somehow established dominance over his club, and he determined to set things right in his own way. (This incident is described at length in a lively new baseball book, Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, by Donald Hall.) The first Cincinnati batter of the game was Pete Rose, and the first pitch from Ellis was at his head - "not to actually hit him," Ellis said later, but as a "message to let him know that he was going to be hit." He then hit Rose in the side. The next pitch hit the next Red batter, Joe Morgan, in the kidney. The third batter was Dan Driessen, who took Ellis's second pitch in the back. With the bases loaded, Dock now threw four pitches at Tony Perez (one behind his back), but missed with all of them, walking in a run. He then missed Johnny Bench (and the plate) twice, whereupon Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh came out to the mound, stared at Ellis with silent surmise, and beckoned for a new pitcher.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the same scene playing out in the major leagues of today.