There is a lot of diplomatic nuance in the “brush-back” pitch. Of course the pitcher and batter are in constant conflict for control of the strike zone. It behooves the pitcher to know what he can get away with each individual batter. Sometimes you want to send a ball straight at the batter’s noggin, a ball that curves at the last moment to miss the batter by a wide margin. This makes the batter look stupid because he “bails out” on a ball that doesn’t come close to him. But the next pitch may start off looking the same, so the batter hangs in, but much to his surprize, this time the ball doesn’t curve at the last second and instead gives him a good beaning. A pitcher who is known to throw at a batters head becomes known as a “headhunter”. My favorite term for the brush-back pitch is “chin music”. A real finesse pitcher becomes a maestro with chin music. Pedro Martinez said he could knock a button off of your shirt if he wanted to. It’s all diplomacy. Are you going to believe and respect that he could?......... or are you gonna taunt him to prove it? I sure hope Pres Trump has a bag of tricks.
It’s always dangerous. But better now, in Syria, than in Ukraine, with a land war in Europe at risk.