The honorable Joe Torre has issued his ruling:
Toronto's Brett Lawrie has received a four-game suspension and will be
fined an undisclosed amount for what Major League Baseball calls
Lawrie's "aggressive actions toward umpire Bill Miller on Tuesday."
Lawrie plans to appeal the suspension and will be in the lineup for Wednesday night's game against the Yankees.
As you've probably seen by now, the 22-year-old Blue Jays third
baseman put on a memorable tantrum after two bad strike calls by
Miller, eventually throwing a helmet that bounced off the ground near
home plate and into Miller's hip.
Just how long Lawrie deserved to be suspended was the subject of a
hot debate for much of Wednesday. On one end of the extremes was our
own Dave Brown, who called for a 10-game break
for the hotheaded sophomore infielder. On the other were the
Labatt-chugging Blue Jay fan boys, who somehow thought Miller's awful
calls provided a way to condone Lawrie's actions. (If you think I'm
inventing a strawman here, I have a full email box to show you.)
The actual suspension landed almost in the middle and was far from severe, a fact that started to become apparent when Torre told Danny Knobler of CBS Sports
that he didn't believe that Lawrie had intentionally hit Miller with
his helmet. "The decision could have been better as [far] as the
direction, but I don't believe he was trying to hit him," Torre told
Knobler.
Truth be told, four games is probably just about right for Lawrie
and that's a judgment I make by completely divorcing his actions from
Miller's egregious calls. The punishment is long enough for Lawrie to
sit down and think about what he did. I'll also argue that any sentence
handed down by Torre pales in comparison to the damage that Lawrie did
to his character. For many sports fans, the first time they'd ever
heard of the blossoming star was when they logged onto Wednesday morning and saw Lawrie completely melting down.
Put it this way: When people are now making the joke that Lawrie
could learn a thing or two about growing up from Bryce Harper —
everyone's previous favorite whipping boy — you can see him being cast
into a mold that will be hard to escape.