Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Opinion

Mark Powell

What is the difference between a "brawl" and a "scrum"? Can one person "barrel" into another without it being considered a "tackle?"

If several dozen grown men coarsely grab each other by the polyester threads of their uniforms, yet no punches are actually thrown, is it considered a fight?

And when it comes to covering Wednesday's bench-clearing baseball altercation, did ESPN know something Sports Illustrated didn't?

Yesterday afternoon's middle school lunchtime shoving contest that occurred in the second inning of a spring training game between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays had me thinking about these questions. Especially the last one.

"Yanks-Rays, Round 2: Five ejected after scrum," the top story link read on the Sports Illustrated Web site Wednesday around 2:30 p.m.

ESPN's top story link, about the same time, read, "Yankees, Rays brawl after Duncan's takeout slide."

The "slide" refers to a hard entrance into second base by Yankee Shelley Duncan into Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura. The altercation prompted Rays right fielder Jonny Gomes to rush toward the infield and either "tackle" Duncan, or "barrel" into him, depending on which story you read.

So, in regards to the links, was yesterday a scrum or a brawl? A scrum, by definition, is a formation that takes place at the beginning of a play during a game of rugby. It's come to be associated with fighting in general, though nothing in spring training tends to resemble a field flooded by players in rugby garb. Milwaukee Brewers gargantuan first baseman Prince Fielder in rugby shorts, anyone?

OK, so it was a brawl then, right? A brawl is considered a noisy altercation involving intent to do some kind of physical harm to an adversary. Does this sound like what happened Wednesday? Maybe, but both Sports Illustrated and ESPN reported that, "No punches appeared to have been thrown and order was restored." Both of them wrote that, just like that, verbatim. It's the only segment of either article that was written precisely the same way. A brawl without punches?

It doesn't seem like a huge deal, but what are these two revered sports news outlets, which we assume covered the exact same incident at the exact same time, trying to say?

Call me a skeptic if you want, but could two realms of our ubiquitous sports media be relaying two different accounts of a single event?

Continued...

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