Let's be real. Baseball fights usually suck, but this week wasn't so bad. Miguel Cabrera is a former Triple Crown Winner -- the first in decades. It was his jab on Thursday I was more impressed with.
Fightful.com will have all your Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather coverage this Saturday, from live discussion to a post-fight podcast right after the show goes off the air. The New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers didn't wait until the weekend to throw hands.
Poor Austin Romine didn't have a chance. At 6-1, 220 pounds, he's a fair sized dude, but he man has been catching all his life. That doesn't bode well for his knees or speed, and the 6-4, 240 pound Venezuelan mastodon in Cabrera exposed that.
Oh yeah, Miguel Cabrera added boxing to his winter workouts, as he revealed in an interview earlier this year.
"It helps footwork, you feel stronger in your shoulder. But it's all about here," he said, tapping his forehead. "Be stronger in your mind. Don't get people in your mind. My friend Jorge Linares, he told me, 'You should do this for cardio, you should do this for footwork. It's going to help you to keep moving. It's going to be good for your body."
I don't know, or really care what they were arguing about -- I'm a Reds fan and that's enough of a problem already. As soon as Romine takes his mask off, Cabrera sees it as a threat and pushes the opponent away to create space. Cabrera gets that space and flicks a left jab to the face. C'mon Romine. You knew the setup was coming from the left -- Cabrera's a righty!
Romine shoots for a takedown, bad idea playboy. Those catcher's knees don't bode well. Take advice from Ronda Rousey, who has notoriously wrecked knees -- use the clinch, work for trips or throws. Shooting at the legs of a guy Cabrera's size is a good way to walk into an uppercut and have the attempt stuffed.
That's what happened. Romine was able to work his way up to his knees and connect with some hard punches to the body of Cabrera. To be honest, those were pretty hard by any standards, not just baseball. Gary Sanchez will probably see a suspension after his punch was thrown in the middle of the war as well.
Perhaps the funniest thing was the Yankee bullpen storming to the damn field like a legion of Ultimate Warriors. These guys are conditioned for one or two innings, they have to pace themselves for the championship rounds.
Other altercations of note was Nicholas Castellanos being held down by a couple of Yankees, and Jacoby Ellsbury almost taking out a couple of his teammates with a flying knee when he looked to prove that 337 stolen bases later, he's still got that speed.
I get it, everyone's in a fighting mood this week. At least Joey Votto has a .447 OBP. Go Reds
