ESPN.com is reporting and the AP is confirming that Russ Springer has been suspended by Major League Baseball for four games and fined a undisclosed amount for the inside pitches he threw to Barry Bonds during the game last Tuesday night.
Phil Garner has also been suspended for one game and fined the same nameless amount.
I understand why Joe West threw Garner and Springer out Tuesday; this, however, seems like more phony moralizing of the sort we've seen plenty of over the last few days.
Though disappointed that they couldn't convict the Houston crowd to five years of hard labor en masse, MLB is obviously more than happy to sanctimoniously seize what it perceives to be the high moral ground here. After Selig refused to even attend the games Bonds played in his own home town, and was identified correctly as a coward for it, the Baseball corporotocracy I'm sure hopes to point to the actions taken today in the coming weeks as how they're actually impartial in the whole Bonds affair.
Given the demonization of the Astros and their fans we've seen in the blogosphere and even in the MSM over the past 72 hours or so, it's a plan that will probably work.
And all they had to do was screw Russ Springer to pull it off. . . .
