The 2019 MLB All-Star Game is in Cleveland this year—a bad little city that celebrates bad boy rock ’n rollers. So it’s high time baseball’s baddest men get recognition for making the game great, too. That’s right. Baseball is bad, and bad is good for baseball. Think about it. All the best baseball stories chronicle the bad and/or badass deeds of men behaving badly. Ty Cobb’s infamous foul play on and off the field. Babe Ruth hitting dingers while drunk. The 1919 Black Sox throwing the World Series. Jackie Robinson’s struggle to break the color barrier. Doc Ellis throwing a no-hitter on acid. Doc & Darryl and the cocaine-snorting ’86 Miracle Mets. Pete Rose gambling on games while managing the Reds. The Steroid Era. And, now, Tim Anderson.
An Unfortunate Injury
With the Chicago White Sox shortstop and bad man Tim Anderson being placed on MLB’s Injured List for the next four to six weeks, who is MLB’s baddest man with Anderson out? He was, you might remember, suspended one game by Joe Torre for calling a pitcher the n-word. Anderson is Black; the pitcher and Joe Torre are white. Searching for the next baddest man, I found that Major League Baseball has a bad problem with Anderson injured. There isn’t enough bad men in the bigs, and baseball is bad because of it.
Baseball’s Backup Bad Men
Anderson called baseball “boring” after being named the American League Player of the Month in April, and it’ll be even more boring with him out for a month. In his absence, baseball’s baddest man, meaning both the most badass and bad behaving, is probably either Manny Machado or Yasiel Puig. It all depends on how you weigh the determining factors.
As far as behavior goes, Puig is beating Machado in badness this season if ejections are the measuring stick. Puig’s been ejected twice to Machado’s once. But Machado has undeniably provided more badass play on the field. No other MLB player has been ejected twice thus far in 2019, but neither has been suspended under the same circumstances as Anderson. Neither is baseball’s baddest man in Anderson’s absence, either.
Baseball’s Baddest Man Standing
On Saturday, Detroit Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire was ejected in the top of the fourth inning for arguing balls and strikes. It was his seventh ejection in 80 games, putting him on pace to be ejected 14 times in 2019. That would crush the single season record by a manager of 11, set by some MLB All-Bad men: the Braves’ Bobby Cox in 2001, the all-time MLB leader in ejections with 158, “Bad Bill” Dahlen, nicknamed for his ferocious temper with umpires, and John McGraw, MLB’s poster bad boy for bad behavior and foul play.
Not only is Gardenhire on pace to set the MLB record for ejections by a manager in a single season. He’s on pace to break Bobby Cox’s career mark. In 13 years as manager of the Minnesota Twins, “Gardy” was ejected 72 times. Now in his second year with the Tigers, Gardenhire has become the seventh-most ejected manager in MLB history with 82 in 14.5 years. That’s a rate of 5.66 ejections per season. Cox put in 29 years and was ejected 158 times for an average of 5.49 ejections per season.
If Gardenhire spends another 13 seasons managing, he’s going to break Bobby Cox’s all-time ejection record, becoming the baddest man in all of baseball history. At 61, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. And given the quality of play he can expect from his Tigers this season and next, he might be in a bad mood often enough to do it in a dozen or so.
Embrace the Bad Boys, Baseball
One thing is certain: baseball needs to embrace its bad boys. And sports media needs to follow everything Gardy does for the rest of the 2019 season. They should play Gardenhire’s ejections in full and inform people that he’s arguing with umpires at a rate and ferocity never before seen in the long history of baseball. But if Gardy, the jovial kidder, is the game’s baddest man with Tim Anderson away, baseball has a real problem.
