Macha Finally Showing Emotion

Brewer fans have plenty of reason to be frustrated with this season. After all, it's not gone well, and for every step forward, the team takes two steps back.

Through it all, manager Ken Macha has continued to show virtually no emotion, even though he did manage an ejection during a game at Colorado last month. That was his first ejection in nearly 300 as Brewers manager, something that took predecessor Ned Yost about 20 minutes.

We've also seen Macha refuse to properly deal with underperforming veteran pitchers, and we've seen his complete lack of emotion during games.

Saturday night, Macha came as close to snapping as he's come in his tenure with Milwaukee.

The Brewers were in the midst of a comfortable 6-3 win over the Atlanta Braves Saturday, when first baseman Prince Fielder came to the plate in the eighth inning. Apparently, he looked at pitcher Johnny Venters wrong, because the first pitch went over Fielder's head, and the second one hit him right in the middle of the back. Since the home-plate umpire had issued a warning between the pitches, Venters was ejected -- along with Braves manager Bobby Cox, who actually knows how to be thrown out of a ballgame, unlike Macha. Fielder threw his bat down, clearly pissed at what went down, but chose not to charge the mound.

After the game, Macha was livid.

Well, livid by Macha standards.

“I don't know what's going on there,” ... Macha said before saying Major League Baseball should get involved. “(Vice President of rules and on-field operations) Bob Watson ought to take a look at it. Braun hits a home run, they drill (Fielder). He hits a home run, his next at-bat they drill him. That's evidence enough for me for some guys to get suspended for quite a bit. “Now if they're just wild, tell them to get the ball over the plate. We're respecting what's going on. Hit the ball, run around the bases. … Apparently they want to pitch Prince inside but in the middle of the back? That's a little more than inside.”

(By the way, Venters and Cox think we're all morons, because neither would admit to any intent, even though this is far from the first time a Brewer hitter has been beaned by an Atlanta pitcher while the Braves are getting beat.)

Cox and Macha met before Sunday's game, probably because Cox knew Manny Parra was pitching for the Brewers, and that made the game virtually a lost cause. If the Brewers wanted to retaliate, wouldn't this be the perfect time to do it?

Fielder handled the situation with class, as he did in the spring when he took a beaning from San Francisco's Barry Zito, and completely unlike his meltdown in Los Angeles last summer.

Now, it's time for the Braves to fess up. Quit playing dumb, and admit that you have some sort of a problem with Prince Fielder. After all, you never know. He might be your teammate soon.

Fielder Takes Beaning Like a Man

When the Milwaukee Brewers got together with the San Francisco Giants Thursday in Arizona, many thought there was a plunking coming.

Last year, Brewers' first baseman Prince Fielder celebrated a walk-off home run with an obviously choreographed celebration. His teammates pretended to be bowling pins when Fielder jumped on home plate.

It was kind of funny, but not really all that cool because of the code of baseball. It's just not something you do, and while the criticism might have been overblown, it was somewhat justified and understandable.

Thursday was the first time the two teams had met since, and Barry Zito had "the honors."

Fielder picked up the ball and flipped it back to Zito, then jogged to first base without incident. Zito said that home plate umpire Ted Barrett issued a warning to both clubs, but Fielder said that wasn't the case.

After the game, Fielder acted like a guy who knew and understood what he had coming. Zito tried to play dumb.

"I've always said, 'I play the game hard. I run hard. And after that, I don't care what anybody thinks,' " Fielder said. "If that's what they've gotta do, that's what they've gotta do. Let them hit me once, and if that makes them feel better, that's awesome. Now we can just play baseball."

Zito, who pitched 1 2/3 innings in his first outing of the spring, denied trying to send a message with the pitch.

"We were just trying to go in there hard [with fastballs]," Zito said. "It's not something that was thought about for months and months."

This isn't 1994. No one is that dumb, Barry.

Fielder got heat last summer for charging at the Dodgers' clubhouse after a beaning. As free agency looms after this season, Fielder is at least talking like someone prepared to turn over a bit of a new leaf.

"Everytime somebody does something to me, I'm the one being videotaped," Fielder said, "so I'm trying to be a good guy. When kids see me getting crazy ... I'm trying to maintain [composure].

"Unfortunately people like to test it sometimes, but I'm working on it. I'm tired of being the bad guy all the time. I'm trying to work on growing up, I guess."

You have to salute Fielder for handling things the way he did. It's not easy to stand in the box and let a guy -- even if it's the notoriously soft-tossing Zito -- throw a fastball at you. Fielder's handling of this in spring training means it won't hang over both teams when they meet in the regular season.

For that matter, you have to salute the Giants. They followed baseball's code, in that they got the situation over with, didn't let it escalate, and didn't make more if it than it needed to be. It might be stupid stuff to many, but the honor code of a sport is very important, and it was well-followed in this instance.