Beckett suspended six games for being a loudmouth

Josh Beckett, originally uploaded by Jeff Valois.

Or that's what I'm choosing to believe, because if there's anything I really fault him for in that bench-clearing incident the other day in Anaheim, it's responding like Bobby Abreu had just insulted his ancestry after one of his blazing-fast pitches, you know, almost hit Abreu in the face. That behavior from ol' Joshie doesn't exactly help the case that it was accidental. And it also wasn't until Josh took what the league calls 'aggressive actions' that everybody came running out onto the field.

I'm choosing to focus on Beckett's attitude here, because it's more than a little bit irritating to picture Mike Scioscia spending the last several days whining to the league about Beckett throwing at Abreu on purpose, and at some point, somebody who wasn't even there deciding in retrospect that yeah, actually, that was the case.

That's dumb. It was either clearly intentional or it wasn't. And if it was that clearly intentional, Beckett should've been ejected shortly after it happened. He wasn't.

Also, somebody want to give me a motive for this supposedly intentional face-pitch? In the middle of the first freakin' inning with a runner already in scoring position? That just happened to coincide with an abysmally late time-out call from the umpire, right in the middle of his delivery?

Comments

[Leeann]

I enjoyed this bit of Beckett's comments about it: "I've never hit anybody in the head, and it's not on my list of [stuff] to get done."

[beth]

Yeah, that's an instant-classic Beckettism right there.

Now I'm also picturing a messily scrawled list hung up in Beckett's locker: "Shit to Get Done".

[julia]

That list would read as follows:

-Execute pitches
-Execute pitches
-Execute pitches

Etc.

[beth]

...something unrepeatable about "chicks"...

lol.

[julia]

And possibly something about beer.

[beth]

Also, venison jerky.