Rangers-Blue Jays Brawl: Uncalled for? Yes. Bad for Baseball: Hell no.

*Disclaimer*
This article is in no way promoting violence in sporting events. Punches to the face are dangerous and can lead to serious injury. But, in the case of Sunday's melee between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays, nobody got hurt, and a lot of eyes were opened. So, here it goes.

I am 18 years young. Baseball is my favorite sport, and it took me quite awhile to accept that our national pastime has a problem attracting younger fans. This winter, I finally came to my senses and realized that kids my age just aren't drawn to this great game the way they used to be. The game is too slow, too passive, and just not interesting enough for the younger generation to be interested. For these reasons, what took place at Globe Life Park in Arlington was overall, good for the game of baseball.


Here's the situation. It's the top of the 8th inning, and the Texas Rangers are clinging to a one-run lead over the Toronto Blue Jays. Jose Bautista is on first base. The reason he is on first base is that Matt Bush, the hard-throwing Rangers reliever, beaned Joey Bats with a 97 MPH Fastball. Justin Smoak is now the hitter. He hits a ground ball to the third baseman, who throws the ball to second to try and turn a double play. Due to the frustration of being beaned by Bush, the man called ''Joey Bats'' attempted an illegal slide into the Rangers second baseman, Rougned Odor. What happened next needs no explanation. For the five people who haven't seen it already, just watch.

The roots of this, as baseball fans should know, go all the way back to last October, when Bautista flipped his bat after hitting the home run that knocked Texas out of the playoffs. Now, here are a few of my takes from this whole fiasco before we get to the main point of the post

1. The fact that this whole thing stems from a bat-flip is absurd. Bautista was showing his emotion in a situation that called for it. Texas completely blew game 5 of that ALDS, and should be more pissed about that.

2. While Bautista's slide was unnecessary, it was no dirtier than what used to be commonplace in the game. MLB Network did an excellent breakdown of the incident which showed Odor intending to hit Bautista in the face with the throw to first. Not only was it wrong for Odor to do this (as well as the punch, of course), as you will see by watching this play, it was also hypocritical.

3. An interesting theory could be that Matt Bush acted alone in beaning Bautista. Bush was not a part of the 2015 Rangers and had never faced Bautista before, so it is possible that Bush was looking to impress his teammates by nailing Joey.

4. Seriously. It was a freaking bat flip.

Now, it goes without saying that this whole melee was uncalled for and pretty childish. However, it accomplished the difficult task of getting people under the age of 45 talking about baseball. On Monday, I asked several of my friends around school who are, at best, casual baseball fans, and every one of them saw the punch and loved what they saw. I saw one of my friends who hates baseball retweet a video of the punch. Young people loved it, and boy, does baseball need more stuff that young people love.

I'm not condoning fighting in sports, as Bautista could have been seriously injured by Odor. However, he was not injured. Therefore, I believe that since this incident got people talking about baseball who would not normally be talking about baseball, it was good for the sport. This is the second article that I have written regarding young fans being drawn away from the game. The first is a featured article on my page, and it also relates to Bautista, and ironically, it relates to the bat-flip that started this whole crap-shoot.

I believe that baseball is doing just fine regardless of the average age of its fans, but getting the kids into it certainly won't hurt business, and this punch sure as hell did not hurt business.  Hopefully, something else can happen to excite the young fans that doesn't involve somebody getting clocked.