Benchclearing: Baseball's Greatest Fights and Riots

Admit it—you take a certain pleasure in witnessing baseball's embarrassing moments, those melees that bring tussling players, ejections, and tarnished reputations. In Benchclearing, journalist Spike Vrusho places you smack dab in the middle of the greatest and most infamous brawls, fistfights, and pile-on game-stoppers, including those that swept fans along for the ride. These are the stories Major League Baseball would prefer to forget, but fans love to relive.

Among the incidents included are:

Red Sox hurler Pedro Martinez’s throw-down of Yankees coach Don Zimmer in the 2003 ALCS

Nolan Ryan's Texas-style whupping of White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura

Juan Marichal’s bat vs. Johnny Roseboro's head-the bloodiest moment in the long history of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry

Fan behavior at its worst, including Chicago's Disco Demolition Night and Cleveland's Ten-Cent Beer Night

An entire chapter devoted to the pugilistic exploits of Yankee legend Billy Martin

Battles involving well-known hotheads from Ty Cobb to Leo Durocher to Roger Clemens

Admit it—you take a certain pleasure in witnessing baseball's embarrassing moments, those melees that bring tussling players, ejections, and tarnished reputations. In Benchclearing, journalist Spike Vrusho places you smack dab in the middle of the greatest and most infamous brawls, fistfights, and pile-on game-stoppers, including those that swept fans along for the ride. These are the stories Major League Baseball would prefer to forget, but fans love to relive.
 
Among the incidents included are:

Red Sox hurler Pedro Martinez’s throw-down of Yankees coach Don Zimmer in the 2003 ALCS

Nolan Ryan's Texas-style whupping of White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura

Juan Marichal’s bat vs. Johnny Roseboro's head-the bloodiest moment in the long history of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry

Fan behavior at its worst, including Chicago's Disco Demolition Night and Cleveland's Ten-Cent Beer Night

An entire chapter devoted to the pugilistic exploits of Yankee legend Billy Martin

Battles involving well-known hotheads from Ty Cobb to Leo Durocher to Roger Clemens

 

Library Journal

Urusho intriguingly recounts many of baseball's most notorious moments. Included are the infamous tantrums involving Roseboro and Marichal, Munson and Fisk, Ventura and Ryan, Piazza and Clemens, Varitek and Rodriquez, and so on. Appropriately, Billy Martin gets his own chapter. Remembered too are riots during a Ten-Cent Beer Night at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium and a Disco Demolition evening at Comiskey Park. For general libraries.

Spike Vrusho was the editor-in-chief of the brilliant but short-lived New York Sports Express. Before that he was a writer for New York Press through the 1990s to 2002. He now lives and writes in Rhinebeck, NY.