The likeliness that Jimenez is to blame can also be traced back through his history with the Rockies. Jimenez is open about his joy for playing for Cleveland, in comparison to the Rockies. There seems to be resentment towards Colorado. Troy Tulowitzki stated that Jimenez disliked his time with Colorado and had an open desire to leave. This would suffice as reason for why Jimenez struck the Rockies' star player.
But were the Rockies unappreciative of Jimenez's talents? This idea places at least some of the blame on Colorado. Why did Jimenez not feel like the Rockies were a team he could succeed with? Can we even prove that the pitch did not get away from Jimenez?
So maybe Tulo has a swollen elbow because Jimenez was being a jerk, or maybe the Rockies really outcast Jimenez from the start. There is, however, a potential third location to place blame- the ball. This sport, and the rivalries that go along with it, would not exist if it was not for the ball that controls everything. This idea of the ball as a deodand- the object responsible for the crime, makes sense. It was after all, technically the ball that hurt Tulo's elbow, not Jimenez. Jimenez could not have thrown the painful pitch if there was no ball. Though this may seem like a silly culprit, it also seems highly logical. Like in Underworld, where Nick's ball is deemed a "murder weapon", could not this act be the objects fault?
Personally, I place my blame on Jimenez. I am a Rockies fan, and especially a Tulo fan, so my bias does come into play. But in situations such as this, it is necessary to consider all the possibilities of who, or what is responsible. This prevents us from jumping to conclusions as the media so often does.
Could Jimenez have just thrown badly? Although I doubt this is the case, I like how you briefly touched on the idea of cheating in baseball. Yes, we could blame the physical baseball, but maybe JImenez was trying to harm Tulo, and subsequently, the Rockies. I understand that some ball players are tempted to cheat by using steroids or by trying to catch a glimpse of the umpire's signals, but it seems unjust to cause physical harm to another player.
ReplyDeletePlacing the blame on the ball itself as depicted in Underworld seems like too much of a cop-out for me. Though I do think Jimenez did deliberately beam Tulo's elbow with the ball, I feel as though the tensions between the two was likely to boil over at one point or another. If there is any silver lining, could it be that at least the incident went down during spring training and not during the regular season? I might be simply hiding behind a somewhat outdated and not entirely applicable theory of "boys will be boys", but these things do tend to happen on much larger scales, during more pivotal moments in the season. Call me overly optimistic but I believe that having this conflict happen now as opposed to it going down in July or August, Jimenez and Tulo might actually put their differences aside and let the disdain they have for one another simmer down significantly.
ReplyDeleteTo push it even further, I think the properties of the ball can be seen to have an affect on the outcome of the pitch itself. Jimenez his Tulo with a fastball. Due to Bernoulli's principle and the rotation of a fastball for a right-handed pitcher, the ball after being thrown moves in towards right handed batters. This fact makes the fastball a more likely pitch to hit a right-handed batter like Tulo compared to say, a slider, which moves away from righty batters, if thrown by a righty pitcher. Had the ball had no seams, then it is likely Tulo would not have been hit even if Jiminez had released the ball in the exact same manner. Instead the ball would have remained closer to the plate and not cut inside to Tulo.
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