Aggression and Violence in Sport

In the world of sports today there is a constant theme in every sport aggression and violence. Aggression can be shown in a lot of different ways in sports. In baseball aggression can be throwing a pitch inside to a player or sliding into second base and taking the second baseman or short stop out. In basketball it can be a hard foul or setting a pick that blind sides a player. And in NASCAR it can be something as little at bumping another car during a race. Over the past few years violence and aggression in sports has gotten bigger and bigger. It seems like you can’t go a week or two without hearing about a fight or altercation that has happened at a sporting event between a couple of players or teams. In the past three years the MLB, college football, and the NBA have had some of their worst cases of violence. Is it because players are getting paid more and more money? Is it that that are getting to be younger players in the league that they don’t know to control their anger and aggression?
Aggressions and violence has been in sports ever since they first began. In baseball throwing inside to a batter or doing a takeout slide at second are two examples of aggressive behavior, but unless it gets out of hand the umpires and players don’t get mad. If players keep getting hit on inside pitches in the same game or when they play the same teams than there is usually retaliation. MLB usually lets the players police themselves unless something gets out of hand. A bench clearing brawl may end up in player suspensions and fines but nothing too drastic because usually in baseball bench clearing brawl don’t amount to much maybe a punch or two being landed. The worst brawl of late didn’t involve two teams it involved it involved Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers and an Oakland Athletics fan. A fan had been heckling the Rangers bullpen the whole game and said a racial slur and Francisco threw a folding chair into the crowd and hit the fans wife. Francisco was suspended for... [continues]

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