BOSTON _ If not for a few inches, the Orioles' Manny Machado might have been hospitalized last Sunday. Or worse. Because once a 90-mph fastball leaves someone's hand, as it did from Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes in this case, there's no predicting the full extent of the damage when a body part is targeted.
But to truly appreciate the ludicrous nature of the payback episode involving Barnes and Machado _ over an awkward slide into second base that was not meant to injure Dustin Pedroia _ just rewind how the subsequent days played out. Major League Baseball, as it regularly does in these incidents, reviewed the case and chose to penalize Barnes with a four-game suspension.
OK, fine. The number of games tends to vary. The fastball missed Machado after all, miraculously ricocheting off his bat while steaming at his head. But the expectation was that Barnes would appeal the suspension _ as pitchers routinely do, especially those that claim their innocence _ and it would be cut in half, or maybe a game trimmed off. That's how the penalty-appeal process tends to function.
Only Barnes, who was ejected from Sunday's game, didn't follow through with the appeal. Despite maintaining that the pitch "got away from me" after trying to "go up and in," Barnes simply accepted the punishment for a crime he insisted he did not commit. This farcical dance has been going on for far too long in baseball, and given the high stakes, for both the players and MLB as a whole, putting a halt to the silly charade is long overdue.
