Sports Violence
...y are to be back on the football field hitting other football players again anyway? Basketball is a very physical sport with elbows being thrown, players jumping up for rebounds, and driving their bodies in to make a basket. With this sort of physical activity, it is expected that there may be a little bit of violence. “With arms raised and faces unprotected, broken noses, split eyebrows, eye injuries such as detached retinas, and broken teeth are not in frequent” (Atyeo 271). It is expected that the referee with call a foul when one is needed happens. It would seem to me that that if I was a player I would happily accept a foul being called on the other player but some players insist on becoming more aggressive and instead of being allowed to take a free throw they decide to start a brawl with another player. Rarely do players have violent interactions with the fans. Recently there was an altercation with basketball players from the Indiana Pacers and fans of the Detroit Pistons. Players from the Indiana Pacers charged at fans after a fan threw a cup of beer at one of the players of the Indian Pacers. Three of the players involved in the incident were suspended to up to twenty-five games with one of them being suspended for the whole season. Some people have said that the penalties were too harsh because the fans were the ones who started the altercation. I feel that the penalties were fair because while the fans did start the altercation, the players should have let security deal with the situation instead of taking matters into their own hands. Some people have said that neither the fans nor the players were at fault but our culture it to blame. “The NBA quickly punished the offending players, which it should have done, but it also acted as if this incident, thought clearly out of the ordinary, was downright alien to the culture, which it was not. So, the NBA did not address the culture, which is what needs fixing” (Large). Baseball is not a very sport that has very much contact but there is still the occasional outbreak of violence that takes place. It seems that almost every time the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees play that there is some sort of a fight. Usually baseball fights are started when a pitcher hits a batter with a pitch. Sometimes the batter decided start a fight with the pitcher or the catcher when this happens and the bullpens of both teams run out onto the field to separate whoever is involved in the altercation. This has always made me think why the player would choose to get in a fight...