After this three game series in Chicago, the Cardinals will travel to Cincinnati for a weekend set against the Reds. Now that Johnny Cueto has been activated from the disabled list, it will also be the first time the Cardinals will face him since the benches clearing skirmish that ended Jason La Rue’s career.

The Commissioners’ Office referenced the Roseboro incident as a guideline for determining punishment for the players and coaches involved in that unfortunate situation, and we have looked at that in a previous I-70 Baseball article. Now it is time to turn our attention to the Cueto incident, and see how the Commisioner did in this case.

August 9, 2010

The Cardinals and Reds had been battling for the lead in the National League Central since mid-May, with neither team being able to make much progress on the other. At the start of this game, the Cardinals trailed the Reds by two games.

There was controversy from the very beginning of the game, but not the type you would have thought. It was between two players from the Cardinals. A promising rally against a struggling Mike Leake had the makings of a huge first inning. As a result, Brendan Ryan ran down to the batting cages to get ready for his at-bat. A double play ended the rally unceremoniously, and Ryan had to hustle to get on the field in time to start the home half of the first. On the way, he couldn’t find his glove and chose to run out with one borrowed from a teammate. Just before Chris Carpenter was about to make his first pitch, somebody in the Cardinal’s dugout found Ryan’s glove and time was called. The volatile Cardinals hurler gave Ryan a glaring look as he switched out his equipment.

Between innings, Carpenter gave an earful to Brendan Ryan. Unfortunately for the two players, the exchange was captured on camera and replayed over and over.

The game was rather uneventful, and over before the last pitch in the fourth inning was thrown. Both pitchers were able to get through their first three innings without much difficulty. The fourth would be a different story as the Cardinals sent 12 men to the plate. When the final out was recorded, they had a commanding 7-0 lead.

Carpenter and two relievers would combine for the win, giving the Reds three runs in the late innings.

What the Cardinals did not know at the time were some inflammatory comments made by Brandon Phillips. He was speaking to a sports writer from Dayton, and took the opportunity to rip on the Cardinals.

I’d play against these guys with one leg. We have to beat these guys. I hate the Cardinals.
All they do is b***h and moan about everything, all of them, they’re little b****es, all of ‘em.
I really hate the Cardinals. Compared to the Cardinals, I love the Chicago Cubs.

Let me make this clear: I hate the Cardinals.

– Brandon Phillips, August 9, 2010

Oh, the Cardinals would learn of Phillips’ comments before the start of the next game.

August 10, 2010

Johnny Cueto would get the start for the Reds in the second game of the series. His opponent from St. Louis is the rookie left-hander, Jaime Garcia. Garcia being a rookie may have a significant impact on what was about to happen.

The Cardinals would manufacture a run in the first inning, thanks to a lead-off double by Felipe Lopez.

Things would turn nasty when the Reds came up to bat for the first time.

Brandon Phillips tapped Yadier Molina’s shin guards, as he usually does in his first plate appearance. Instead of choosing a more old-school approach of having his pitcher throw at Phillips, Molina decides to take matters into his own hands. He stands up and starts barking with Phillips. As the two exchange pleasantries, both benches clear and a mob begins to form around home plate.

Yadier Molina, Mark Wegner and Brandon Phillips

What happens next is captured in detail in the MLB Video Archives. You can see both the Fox Sports Ohio and Fox Sports Midwest broadcast of the event. In addition to the MLB video, our friends at Viva el Birdos have broken the event down into who did what to whom, albeit with the bias of a Cardinal Fan’s point of view.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Cardinals fan or a Reds fan, this conflict turned ugly. At the back of it all was Reds starting pitcher, Johnny Cueto. He was kicking Cardinals players repeatedly – and while still wearing his spikes. A very dangerous situation, indeed. The concussion that Jason La Rue sustained in the brawl would ultimately cost him the remainder of his baseball career.

What happens next angers Cardinals fans to this very day. Johnny Cueto was allowed to stay in the game.

Perhaps there is something to the notion of karma. Cueto would end up taking the loss, and the Cardinals would pull even with the Reds after this emotional victory. An dominating afternoon win by Adam Wainwright on the following day would give the Cardinals a sweep of the series, and a one game lead in the division. Sadly, it would be their last one as a disappointing homestand followed by a brutal road trip through Washington, Houston and Pittsburgh ended all playoff hopes for the 2010 season.

But that’s not the real end to this story.

A Slap on the Wrist

Major League Baseball was about to take punitive action against several Cardinals and Reds players and their managers.

The first failure of Major League Baseball happened immediately following the brawl. In the Roseboro incident, Shag Crawford wasted little time ejecting Juan Marichal. We will never know if he would have done the same to Roseboro because the Dodgers catcher had to leave the game due to injuries sustained in the attack.

Neither home plate umpire, Mark Wegner, nor crew chief Jeff Kellogg took any action towards Johnny Cueto. He was allowed to stay in the game, which in retrospect might have been a good thing for the Cardinals. He was clearly rattled and the Redbirds hitters were able to take advantage of that. Mark Wegner did eject both managers: Tony La Russa (St. Louis) and Dusty Baker (Cincinnati).

Next came the suspensions. Both managers were suspended for two games. It was the suspension for Cueto that raised eyebrows in Cardinals Nation. The big right-hander was given a seven game suspension for his “violent and aggressive actions.” All three were fined an undisclosed amount, as were Brandon Phillips, Yadier Molina, Russ Springer and Chris Carpenter. In case you are wondering about Springer’s fine, it was because he was still on the disabled list, and was not eligible to be on the field when the brawl took place.

Any way you look at this, Johnny Cueto got off with just a slap on the wrist. A seven game suspension meant that he would only miss one start. While the League Office did not know that Jason La Rue’s concussion was career ending, they did know that he had been placed on the disabled list immediately after the game. If the Commissioner were trying to apply the Roseboro Incident here, he really missed the mark. Juan Marichal was suspended for nine games when he took a baseball bat to the helmeted head of John Roseboro. He was also prohibited from making the final road trip to Los Angeles, which forced the Giants to rearrange their rotation to accommodate the ruling. In addition, Roseboro only missed a few games and never went on the disabled list. Even more infuriating was the part that Roseboro played in instigating the confrontation in 1965, which would have been taken into consideration in Marichal’s punishment. The only thing La Rue did was try to get between Cueto and his teammate, Chris Carpenter.

On the subject of fines, even though the one to Cueto was not disclosed, we can make some guesses relative to the one handed out to Marichal. The Giants hurler was fined $1,750, which was approximately 3% of his salary for the 1965 season. Marichal was an established star at the time and was earning the pay you would expect from a top player of his era. In 2010, Cueto was earning a league minimum of $445,000. 3% of that would be $13,300, and that is probably close to what he was actually fined. That amount would be consistent with other players whose fines were made public.

But let’s look at this another way. Cueto just signed a five year deal to avoid his arbitration years. That deal is paying him $3.4M for 2011. 3% of that would be a whopping $102,000. When was the last time you heard a player being fined anywhere near this amount ?

While there were some similarities between the Roseboro and Cueto incident (pennant race, a player using their equipment to injure another), there were some striking differences. Johnny Cueto was not provoked like Juan Marichal. Marichal also stopped hitting Roseboro when he saw that he was bleeding from under his batting helmet. Cueto kept on kicking until the scrum of players broke up.

The biggest difference between these two events is the power that the MLB Player’s Union carries. In 1965, the union was weak, relative to the team owners. As a result, baseball decisions coming out of the League Office tended to favor the position of the owners, not the players. Things were changing quickly, the union was not in the power chair quite yet. A ripple effect of this is that umpires were not shy in taking control of situations on the baseball field.

In 2010, the players union carries much more clout. The implication is that the League Office will not do anything to upset them, and put a future collective bargaining agreement in jeopardy. Umpires, except perhaps Bob Davidson, are less likely to take control of events in a baseball game, relying instead on filing a detailed report and letting somebody else make the decision about what to do, and whom to fine.

Tough Guys, Big Hearts

There must be something truly special about catchers. John Roseboro originally sued Juan Marichal, but later settled for a much reduced amount without going to court. That was later put behind the two men as Roseboro acknowledged his part in the event and subsequently forgave Marichal for his actions. They two became friends, and their story ends with Marichal delivering the eulogy at Roseboro’s funeral.

The last we heard from Jason La Rue was that the effects from the concussion were still persistent and making his daily life difficult. He also indicated that he has no plans on seeking any civil litigation as a result of Cueto’s attack, preferring to put the matter behind him. That’s already several steps down the path that Marichal and Roseboro took. Mr. Cueto, the ball is now in your court.

Bob Netherton covers Cardinals history for i70baseball.com and writes at On the Outside Corner. You may follow Bob on Twitter here or on Facebook here.

To read part 1 of this series, about Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, click here.

On Sept. 21, 1983, at Royals Stadium against the California Angels, in front of 14,874 fans, at 45 years of age, Gaylord Perry threw his last pitch in a major league ballgame. Was it a fastball? A nasty curve? A hard slider? A forkball?

With Gaylord Perry you were never quite sure what he had thrown, but everyone, especially hitters and opposing managers, had opinions. Was it a spitter? A grease ball? An emery ball? A guacamole ball?

About the only pitch he was never accused of throwing was a guacamole ball. His alleged use of foreign substances was so pervasive it was the main thing on every hitter’s mind when he dug in against the right handed magician.

His last pitch, whatever it was, induced Ellis Valentine to ground into a force out at second base to end the inning. It was the top of the fifth and it was a fitting final act for a Hall of Fame career. He may have given up two runs in the inning, but he limited the damage keeping his team within striking distance down just 3-0. He stranded seven runners in the first five frames of his final game, emblematic of his bend-but-don’t-break career. And, he struck out two Angel hitters in that two-run fifth – Rob Wilfong and fellow Hall of Famer Rod Carew, who was hitting .345 at the time.

Of course, it was just a meaningless late September game in Kansas City that year. The Royals were in second place at the time, but at 73-78 they were buried 17-and-a-half games behind the first place White Sox. Perry was finishing his 21st season, this season wearing a Royals cap with who knows what smeared under the brim. In all, he lost twice as many games as he won that last go round, splitting time between the Mariners and Royals. He was 4-4 with the Royals but just 3-10 with Seattle, who released him June 27. He signed with the Royals July 6.

Perry, who wore 13 different numbers in his career, took his 314 wins into the Hall under a San Francisco Giants’ cap. It was the Giants who found him in North Carolina, the Giants who brought him through the farm system, it was San Francisco where he pitched the first 10 years of his career and it was San Francisco where he won 23 games in 1970. He put together a stunning seven-year stretch of pitching from 1969 through 1975 for the Giants and the Indians when he won 140 games and lost only 104, a .742 winning percentage. No doubt he didn’t need that 21^st season in Seattle and Kansas City to reach Cooperstown. He had 307 wins before the season started. His decline had been long and gentle. His last big season had been 1978 when he won 21 games for San Diego and he won a dozen more in 1979. But 1979 was his last winning season.

Oh what tangled webs we weave / when at first we practice to deceive

If pitching is primarily deception, as some say, Gaylord Perry held a doctorate in the science. He was compared to the great Harry Blackstone by one writer on the occasion of the great pine tar debacle. No doubt more than a few writers in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s compared him to Houdini, as well. His spitter, or greaseball, or emery ball, or “hard slider” as his 5-year-old daughter once described it to a television reporter, was as much sleight of hand as pitching technique, as much illusion as reality.

It was enough, he often said, for the hitter to think he was throwing a greaseball. More devastating to hitters than speed or motion is the shadow of a doubt. Three-thousand five hundred fifty-four times hitters walked away from the plate stuck out by Gaylord Perry. It’s a good bet most went back to the dugout cursing saliva or Brylcreem. The defeated hitter could have cursed one of Perry’s six other pitches – his two sliders, his fastball, change up, curve, or the forkball he acquired in the middle of his career – but the blame always seemed to go to the spitter.

It got so bad that major league baseball had pitched balls from one Perry outing chemically analyzed for untoward residue. An umpire once strip searched him. He was told to roll up his pant legs for inspection, his cap was snatched off by an opposing manager, Ralph Houk, who surprised him on the mound, his collar, his neck, the band of his cap, the bill of his cap, his armpits, his shirt, his undershirt, his glove, his belt and his hair, when he had hair, were all searched but he was only convicted on two occasions. One of his many managers, tired of his ace being harassed every outing, invited the umpire crew to the bullpen to watch the action on his forkball. They reported to the league office the forkball acted exactly like a spitball.

Of course, those may not have been forkballs. Where Gaylord Perry was concerned, you just never knew. He was a living conspiracy theory.

And he contributed to that mystery, writing in 1974 that he had tried everything but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce on the ball.

His personal web of deception was complete when he came to the Royals in 1983. Dick Howser was ejected from a game in 1973 between the Yankees and the Indians when he was the Yankee’s third base coach and Perry was on the mound for the Tribe. Howser got the heave-ho for registering a rather loud complaint about Perry’s devious pitches. Billy Martin was at the helm of the Detroit Tigers at the same time. On August 30, the Tigers were being shut out by Perry, which caused one in a long string of Martin tantrums. He ordered his pitchers to throw nothing but spitballs the last two innings to protest the home plate umpire’s unwillingness to see Perry doctoring the ball, he said. After Martin called the commissioner’s office “gutless” in the affair, the league suspended him three games for his antics. He was fired before he could serve the suspension and several days later took his act to Texas, where Perry also found himself two years later. Apparently Perry had stopped throwing illegal pitches when he was traded to Texas because Martin no longer seemed so interested in cleaning up the game.

Perry had a good second half for the Rangers in 1979 but Martin did not. Fired yet again, he returned to the Bronx for the first of five stints as Yankee manager. Which is where he was in on July 24, 1983 when Dick Howser and Gaylord Perry were in the Royals’ dugout, Goose Gossage was on the mound in the bottom of the ninth brought in by Martin to protect a one-run lead, U.L. Washington was on first base, and George Brett was gripping a 32-ounce, 7-grain Louisville Slugger in his bare hands at the plate.

“The report will include Perry’s dastardly deed…”

Brett, as the world knows, deposited Gossage’s second pitch into the right field stands at Yankee Stadium and all hell broke loose. You’ve seen the video more often than you’ve seen your mother. Surprisingly, you can’t find it on You Tube but a video of a guy just talking about it has 24,000 hits. No matter. Nobody needs You Tube, or MLB.com, where the video is actually posted, to see Brettt storming from the dugout with fire in his eyes when umpire Tim McClelland called him out for having pine tar more than 18 inches up the taper.

Most accounts of that infamous afternoon in the Bronx make special reference to Perry’s role in it, probably because his role in the incident fits his narrative so perfectly. Writing for the Washington Post the next day, Derrick Jackson has Rick Cerone, the Yankee catcher, nearly blowing Billy Martin’s plan by picking up the bat, forgetting what he was supposed to be looking for and, finding no evidence of cork, handing it back to bat boy Meritt Riley. Martin, however, got the bat to McClelland and a George Brett rage befitting Rowdy Roddy Piper was on.

Minutes later with Joe Brinkman holding Brett in a headlock, Jackson’s account has Royals’ coach Rocky Colavito arguing with McClelland as diversion for Perry to slip out of the dugout and steal the bat lying on the ground behind the 6-foot-6 umpire. According to Jackson, McClelland went after Perry when he realized the bat was being spirited away and Perry handed it off to Hal McRae who was then cornered in the Royals’ runway by a phalanx of security personnel, “and some of my old buddies from the Bowery,” Howser added.

Later, Howser mused on the offending bat’s whereabouts. Was it in the hands of the CIA? The Pentagon? Jackson’s account winds up describing the report the umpiring crew would likely send to the commissioner’s office. The report, he wrote, “will include Perry’s dastardly deed.”

Hubert Mizell, St. Petersburg Times sports editor and columnist, took special note on July 26 of Perry’s role in the affair.

“The avowed master of sleight of hand,” he wrote, “44-year-old Gaylord Perry, attempted to hide teammate Brett’s bat before it could be subpoenaed by those now-suspicious umpires. For 25 years, Perry has shown a Blackstone-like magic for hiding spitballs and greaseballs from umpires. This time he didn’t make it. Brett’s hitting stick was to be recovered, measured and outlawed. Perry began by flipping it to Hal McRae, telling him to pass the bat on. Down the row it went. Finally, the bat was in Steve Renko’s hand. He was the last man in the row. There was nowhere further for the bat to go. Nobody else to pass it to.

“The jig was up.”

‘I was always able to take my turn…’

The next time Gaylord Perry knew the jig was up was late September in Kansas City. It was two days after he left the mound at Royals Stadium down 3-0 in the fifth, an inning in which the last of his 3,524 strikeout victims was the great Rod Carew. He walked into manager Dick Howser’s office and, according to the account of Associated Press reporter Doug Tucker, surprised the manager with his decision.

“He came in and said, ‘I’d like to speak to you, Skip,’” Howser told Tucker. “Then he laid it out. He was businesslike and a little sad.”

“I think this is the time,” Perry told reporters later.

At the press conference that evening, he offered an eloquent goodbye.

“I played with the guy I think was the greatest player ever, Willie Mays,” he said. “I played against Koufax. I pitched with one of the all-time great pitchers, Juan Marichal. I played with Dale Murphy in Atlanta. I played with Dave Winfield in New York. I played with George Brett and Dan Quisenberry in Kansas City.

“It’s all been great, but now it’s time to get back home to the peanut farm and make a living there.”

Ironically, according to Mark Armour’s fine biograph for SABR, his 300-acre North Carolina peanut farm went belly up two years later. He was forced to work as a regional sales representative for a chips and tacos company, which took him right back to his early days in the late 1960s selling insurance and, later, cars, in the off season.

Gaylord Perry was as old school as a ballplayer gets without being a hundred years old. He had those inevitable Southern roots, he grew up country as Can’t-Bust-Em overalls, practiced baseball with his brother Jim — himself a successful major league pitcher — and his father Evan on dinner breaks from – ok this is really too good – plowing fields behind a mule. He was gritty and outspoken, irreverent as the Sundance Kid, wily and crafty, and always ready to toe the rubber.

“I was always able to take my turn,” he told Tucker proudly on the day he retired. And that he was. He said he could only remember two times he missed a scheduled start across the two decades he spent pitching baseballs from San Francisco, to Cleveland, to Texas, to San Diego, back to Texas, to the Big Apple, to Seattle, and, finally — his magical mystery tour complete — to Kansas City.

It is hard to describe how frustrated I was to have missed all of Adam Wainwright’s twentieth win this past Friday in Chicago. It is just one win in a season that people have been referring to as everything from disappointing to perplexing, but to this fan, it was frustrating to miss this win in particular. 20 wins in a season seems to be a benchmark for pitchers, much like hitting .300, hitting 30 home runs or driving in 100 runners would be for a hitter. Speaking of…

Despite a year in which Albert Pujols has had some rather disappointing stretches (at least by his standards), he yet again finds himself near the top of the statistical leaderboards. He currently sits in the top five in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, on-base plus slugging percentage, home runs, runs, runs batted in, hits, extra base hits, walks, and intentional walks. Just for good measure, he could probably throw in a strong bid to win another Gold Glove.

Holy smokes.

I think I have reached acceptance with the fact that this Cardinals team is not going to be playing in October. The ‘tragic number’ has not yet hit zero, so the optimist in me is still holding out hope, but the realist in me took over a few weeks ago. However, winter is long and cruel, and I refuse to accept its closing in until baseball is over. For me, baseball is not over until the last pitch of the World Series. So for the past few weeks, what has there been to cheer for as a Cardinals fan?

The stats. I have been cheering for the team, the players, the standings all season long, but down to the wire, all that has been there is the stats. It was cheering for Albert Pujols to make his tenth consecutive season of hitting .300 with 30 home runs and 100 RBI. It was cheering for Adam Wainwright’s 20 wins. It was hoping that Matt Holliday could continue his 16 game hitting streak (which ended Saturday in Chicago). On those days where it seems like the team is laying (another) egg, why not find something else to cheer for?

Invariably, whenever someone mentioned this topic, the cynics and extreme realists will angrily shout about baseball being a team game, statistics meaning nothing when the team is not winning and in the playoffs, and wasting the prime years of various superstars’ lives by not bringing home championships year after year. To that I say those people are not wrong in the slightest. It is frustrating to see the team lose, and it will not make things better just because someone finds their name on a plaque at the end of the season. Individual achievements are not the goal.

What if this team had not had so many expectations placed on it at the beginning of the year? Would the stellar play of the teams’ various superstars seem more amazing then? Would fans be able to appreciate a 20 win Cy Young-caliber season, .300/30 HR/100 RBI, 5 All-Stars and a solid Rookie-of-the-Year candidate? Possibly.

In 1998, Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs. Does anyone even remember where the Cardinals finished that year? 83-79, in third place, and well off the pace set by the division leading Houston Astros, who finished 102-60. I certainly did not remember that of my own accord. What I do remember is being captivated all season long by long home runs, heart-stopping swings, and the joy of following the stats.

That was a fun season to be a baseball fan. 2010 had some fun in it too. I seem to recall an eight game winning streak, strong debut seasons by several individuals such as Jaime Garcia, Jon Jay and Fernando Salas, and the aforementioned years by Wainwright and Pujols. We smiled and cheered and clapped for every win, every stolen base, and every ‘meaningless’ statistical marker. I know the end result is not what we fans were hoping for, but admit it, you had some fun along the way.

If you didn’t, why are you still reading?

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com, BaseballDigest.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.