Posted on 02/06/2016 3:39:20 AM PST by Fai Mao
Nolan Ryan-Robin Ventura: The Inside Story Of Baseball’s Most Famous Fight
Much has been made about the “Ventura Fight” but most don’t realize its roots started three years earlier in Florida.
In the 1990s, Chicago’s Craig Grebeck was one of baseball’s smallest everyday players. Just 5’7”, he compensated for his lack of stature with the attitude of Goliath.
During a spring training game against the Rangers in 1990, Grebeck hit a home run on the first pitch and pumped his fists triumphantly as he jogged around the bases. Sitting on the Rangers bench, Ryan stared at the Lilliputian and made a mental note.
A few months later the Rangers were at Comiskey Park. Ryan was on the mound, and Grebeck hit a home run off him. As he had in Florida, Grebeck whooped it up rounding the bases. When Ryan got back to the bench, he asked pitching coach Tom House, “Who is that boy?”
House told him Grebeck’s name.
“How old is he?” asked Ryan next. “He looks like he’s about 12.”
“He’s pretty young,” said House.
“Well, I’m gonna put some age on the little squirt. He’s swinging like he isn’t afraid of me.”
“Sure enough,” recalls House, “next time up [in the teams’ next meeting], plunk! Nolan hits him right in the friggin’ back. Grebeck was 0-for the rest of the year off him.”
Thus began three seasons of constant strife between the Texas Rangers and Chicago White Sox.
“It didn’t help,” says House, “that Chicago hitting coach Walt Hriniak taught his hitters to cover the outside third of the plate. He even had his hitters dive toward the plate in order to cover the outside corner.
“That was encroaching on Ryan’s turf. His fastball spent so much time on the outside half it could have taken up residence there. ‘Half the plate’s yours, half is mine,’ was Ryan’s thinking. ‘you don’t know what half I want. But if you’re going to take away half of the plate that I want, you’re gonna pay.’
“He hit a bunch of White Sox. They had a philosophy that didn’t quite fit in with Nolan’s philosophy, and we had three or four fights with them, because Nolan would pitch into hitters that were diving.”
Robin Ventura disagrees. It wasn’t batting stances that caused the friction, he says, but a good old-fashioned bean-ball war.
“Hriniak didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ventura claims. “At the time in baseball the zone was low and away, and that was where pitchers were getting you out. We weren’t the only team doing it. It was the kind of pitch that was getting called, so you just had to be able to go out and get it.”
In any case, altercations between the two teams accelerated:
August 17, 1990: Ryan hit Grebeck again in his first at-bat on the first pitch. Three innings later the Sox retaliated by hitting Rangers third baseman Steve Buechele.
September 6, 1991: Ryan hit Ventura in the back at Arlington.
August 2, 1993: Two days before the Ventura fight, Roger Pavlik of the Rangers hit Ron Karkovice. Chicago retaliated by hitting Dean Palmer twice and Mario Diaz once.
“We had a lot of going back and forth that season,” says Ventura. “Guys were getting hit regularly, and it was just one of those things where something was going to eventually happen.”
I saw him many times a the dome, also. His grunt when he delivered would have been enough to scare me.
As a lifelong Astros fan, and one who probably saw every one of his home starts at the dome that year, I can truly tell you, I bet he thought he was in the Baseball Episode of the Twilight Zone. Countless 2-1, 3-2, 2-0, etc. losses.
I remember a Pittsburg pitcher named Ivan DeJesus who in his first few years had terrible records but a way low ERA. He once had a 20 loss season but remember it being said about him that a pitcher had to be REALLY good to lose 20 games.
I think it was actually Ryan who said, “I just gave him a couple of noogies.” Ventura was lucky — Ryan clearly could have done some serious damage but instead chose to give him a little lesson.
I saw at least two of Ryan’s one-hitters in person but never one of his no-hitters.
My favorite comment about facing Ryan was from Oscar Gamble: “A good night tonight is 0-4 and don’t get hit in the head.”
Randy Johnson also gives him credit for turning him into a pitcher instead of a just being another guy who could throw hard but never knew where it was going.
The Ryan Express and the Big Unit were dominant!
Film footage at the time showed Ryan head on delivering those shots on Ventura, said to be four to the head & two to the face.
Footage available now only shows Ryan’s back as he hits, & then Ventura stalking away.
“Baseball’s most famous fight”? There were some real “rhubarbs” out on the diamond in the teens & twenties, and not one sided like this one.
Joe D. at .344 vrs Feller. I would put ted Williams in the ‘owned’ category also. Williams had an incredible .368/.513/.793 line, (Batting Average/OBP/Slugging), with 9HR’s in 113 plate appearances against the great Bob Feller. What an Era in MLB!!!
Oscar, (and his HUGE afro), questioned by a reporter when he was with the Yanks about their past greats: Reporter: “Babe Ruth?” Oscar: “Who?” Reporter: “Okay, The Iron Horse?” Oscar: “A what?” Reporter: “The Yankee Clipper?” Oscar: “Oh I know THAT one! That is George Steinbrenner.....he made me cut my afro!” Oscar was a real gem but he could play a bit to.
Williams was quite a hitter and one wonders how greater his accomplishments would have been had he not been in the military.
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