5
OPINION

Thursday, June 15, 2017

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“

Did you see the fight between 
Hunter Strickland and uh, 
what’s his name?” my dad asked 

me a few weeks ago.

I hadn’t, so when I hung up the 

phone, I did a Google search and the 
results were instantaneous. During 
the game, the San Francisco Giants’ 
pitcher, Hunter Strickland, hit Bryce 
Harper, a batter for the Washington 
Nationals, with the ball. A fight 
ensued and both teams cleared their 
benches to join in the fight. It had 
become an all-out brawl of sorts, guys 
on each side throwing punches and 
pulling players off each other.

The first article I clicked on started 

off giving a play-by-play of the fight, 
and a few paragraphs in, the author 
wrote, “the most entertaining part for 
me was…” Then the author went on to 
crack a joke about how Harper’s helmet 
throw at Strickland was so bad it was 
“funny.” I stopped reading. This was 
a fight, where people threw punches. 
People piled on top of each other, and 
without the extra protection provided 
by padding and helmets for football 
players. Both Strickland and Harper 
were suspended for multiple games. 
This fight was no joke, and it certainly 
didn’t feel like something we could call 
“entertaining.”

Don’t get me wrong. I have loved 

baseball since I was a little kid. Some 
of the most memorable parts of my 
childhood were sitting on my dad’s lap 
in his tiny home office watching the 
game on his fuzzy first-generation TV 
and eating hotdogs and popcorn at the 
park until I was sick. But as a lifelong 
fan, it’s incredibly upsetting to me that 
we aren’t treating violence as violence. 
It shouldn’t be chalked up to people 
simply getting heated, or people who 
are passionate about their sport.

I read a few more articles, hoping 

for something of substance. And 
while some took on a better tone, 
there were still far too many articles 
that were much of the same. Another 
guy weighed in the on the helmet 
throw. We should all “appreciate” 
the horrible helmet throw, he wrote. 
Another article was entitled, “The 5 
Best Photos from the Bryce Harper-
Hunter Strickland Brawl.” Then in 
one of the videos of the fight that I 
clicked on, I could hear one of my 
favorite 
hometown 
announcers 

during the fight saying, “this is a good 
one folks.”

In fact, just a few days ago, an 

article in The Washington Post 
described how the MLB was 
planning to auction off Strickland’s 
jersey from that game, advertising it 
as the jersey he wore when he “was 
ejected from the game after fighting 

with Bryce Harper.” People on the 
internet also went wild with memes 
of the fight.

And imbedded within these 

articles and memes was something I 
found equally, if not more upsetting. 
People were quick to pounce on the 
Giants’ catcher, Buster Posey, who 
stayed out of the fight, and MLB 
fans were also unnecessarily critical. 
Instead of questioning why he didn’t 
get involved, instead of roasting him 
for not “helping his man,” as one fan 
wrote, we should be questioning why 
everyone else didn’t stay out of it. We 
should be applauding him for not 
getting involved, not shaming him 
for not putting himself at risk and 
adding fuel to the fight. And maybe, 
we should be taking a page from 
Posey’s book. We need to discourage, 
not encourage, this type of violence.

Yes, I know that for these players, 

this is their career, and like many 
passionate people, they can get 
heated 
and 
sometimes 
violent, 

especially if they think something big 
is on the line. But that isn’t something 
we should be comfortable with. And 
where else in a professional setting is 
violence such as this egged on? How 
often do you see a lawyer charging at 
the opposing counsel and throwing 
punches at them during a trial 
treated as entertainment? Sports and 
baseball shouldn’t be any different.

Instead of indulging fighting and 

violence in sports, as journalists, 
citizens, leagues, associations and 
fans, we should be working on 
sanctions and programs to minimize 
it. Journalists, calling the fight 
“entertaining,” the internet making 
memes of the fight, the MLB for 
advertising a jersey for auction as 
one that they brawled in, are part of 
the larger problem and encourage a 
sports culture where violence is not 
only acceptable, but a part of what 
makes the sport fun. 

Furthermore, this culture of 

normalized violence in sports has 
already made a big impact and will 
continue to do so unless something 
changes. In response to the fight, 
Harper said “sometimes you just 
gotta go and get them and can’t 
hesitate,” even if you might be 
suspended. And Strickland, in an 
interview, said he also didn’t regret 
the fight. Jake Arrieta of the Chicago 
Cubs called the fight “awesome.” But 
they should have regretted what they 
did; fights aren’t “awesome.”

After all, would this Giants-

Nationals 
brawl 
be 
considered 

“funny” if someone was seriously 
injured and it ended his season? 
Because as far as the game goes, 

everyone should realize they have 
a stake in making sure athletes are 
healthy: teams that want to win, the 
players who want to stay in the game, 
fans who want to see their favorite 
players play, owners who don’t want 
to pay a player to sit on the bench, the 
list goes on.

And even though sports such as 

football involve tackling and other 
somewhat dangerous play, there 
are still guidelines put in place to 
minimize the violence. In football, 
there are penalties for punching and 
other unsportsmanlike conduct; the 
NBA has fouls for excessive or violent 
contact that could result in injury. In 
the MLB, if you’re a batter hit by a ball 
at the plate, in almost every case, you 
get to advance to first base.

What’s more, professional sports 

are constantly working to make 
game play safer. In 2012, MLB 
adopted new concussion protocols. 
In 2014, new rules were made up 
for home plate collisions. In 2009, 
the NFL acknowledged the long-
term effects of concussions for the 
first time and since then began 
implementing stricter concussion-
prevention measures. Some of these 
rules have come after injuries such 
as Posey’s home plate collision in 
2011, or when journalists and player 
advocates have put a spotlight on the 
dangers of concussions in all sports, 
and especially football.

So, if we are constantly trying to 

make the game itself safer, shouldn’t we 
also want the same for the moments in 
between the plays? The seconds before 
two players with a long rivalry seem like 
they’re about to charge at each other? 

And 
masking 
violence 
as 

entertainment and player passion will 
have consequences that will carry on 
for generations. Young kids who are 
watching and taking their cues from 
their parents, friends, favorite players 
and idolized journalists will grow up 
thinking this is acceptable behavior in 
sports — and likely in other aspects of 
their lives. In fact, in a 2015 Gallup poll, 
59 percent of Americans said they were 
sports fans. Sports seep into everyday 
life and has the power to influence so 
many people, even outside of those 
who follow or participate in sports. 
And thanks to the internet, it’s easy 
for anyone to stumble across videos 
and memes of these fights. So, it’s up 
to everyone, players, coaches, fans and 
journalists to change the way we talk 
about violence and fighting in sports. 
Otherwise, we all pay the price. 

—Anna Polumbo-Levy can be 

reached at annapl@umich.edu.

Clean up the game

I

n my last column, I mentioned 
learning about the Adena 
people, who lived on the 

land now called Ohio from more 
than 2,000 years ago to the first 
century A.D., when the Adena 
were overcome by and blended into 
other tribes. Though some of their 
physical traces have been marked 
and preserved, much evidence of 
the Adena people has disappeared 
over the centuries. This is true 
throughout central Ohio, including 
my hometown of Bexley.

The Adena’s physical legacy 

is manifest mostly in the form of 
burial mounds filled with tools and 
remains of individuals from their 
small farming communities. There 
are mounds all over central Ohio, 
but some are easier to identify 
than others because they vary in 
size and are seldom marked. Some 
Adena mounds are only a couple 
feet high and may look like a slight 
swell in the ground, while others 
are more than 20 feet high, perfect 
semicircles sitting atop what was 
once flat earth.

Obviously, 
these 
burial 

mounds 
were 
significant 
to 

Adena 
communities, 
but 
for 

myriad reasons (including federal 
regulations) most of the mounds 
in central Ohio have no historical 
markers identifying them as 
significant sites. Even worse, 
many have been destroyed in 
the process of farming and land 
development. This means burial 
mounds, 
containing 
artifacts 

and human remains, have been 
ploughed, built over or otherwise 
demolished in the process of 
construction.

The McAlla Mound, named 

for the farmer who found it while 
ploughing, is located on a strip of 
land in the city of Columbus that 
abuts Bexley. The site of ancient 
Adena settlements and the McAlla 
Mound correspond generally to 
Wolfe Park, a city park which is 
bordered by Alum Creek on one 
side and a collection of mansions 
on the other. Different maps show 
the mound in different places, and 
the area is hilly. With no marker 
and inconsistent maps, it’s difficult 
to tell what could have once been a 
mound and what is just the natural 
topography. The Adena were there 
once, but even a thorough look 
around wouldn’t tell you that.

Though there are some efforts 

to educate school-aged kids and 
the public about local indigenous 
people’s histories, in general, it 

is difficult to find thorough and 
up-to-date information. Most of 
the contents of the mound are on 
display at the Bexley Historical 
Society (I say “most” because 
what’s left out is the human skull 
allegedly found there, which is 
prohibited from being displayed). 
The Ohio History Connection 
also has an exhibit about the 
history of Native Americans 
in Ohio more generally. And 
a teacher from the Columbus 
School for Girls, a private school 
in Bexley, successfully helped 
her students lobby the Ohio 
legislature to make the Adena 
pipe the state artifact, which is 
commendable for increasing the 
Adena tribe’s visibility.

Still, it seems odd to me that I 

know so little about the Adena 
people and that I’ve had to work 
so hard to find the information I 
now have. I’ve come to what little 
I’ve learned through hours spent 
in the Columbus Metropolitan 
Library, the Bexley Public Library 
and the Bexley Historical Society, 
and through contacting people at 
various organizations who might 
be able to tell me something more.

I wonder what in people’s 

minds would change if there was 
some kind of historical marker in 
the general area where the McAlla 
Mound was found. Unfortunately, 
in the place where the mound is 
or was, I see only colonial revival 
style houses and a park named 
after one of the first prominent 
landowning families in the area.

The story of the Adena people’s 

relationship with the Bexley area’s 
first white settlers is different 
from 
the 
usual 
narrative 
of 

violence between living bodies of 
indigenous people and colonists of 
European descent because Adena 
communities ceased to exist by 
the time colonists arrived to the 
United States. Therefore, they 
didn’t have to choose to trade, 
fight or make what peace they 
could with European settlers or 
their descendants. But the erasure 
of the Adenas’ presence on this 
land is demonstrative of wealthy 
white America’s attitude toward 
indigenous history more broadly 
and represents a violence more 
difficult to trace.

— Regan Detwiler can be reached 

at regandet@umich.edu.

REGAN DETWILER| COLUMN
ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY| COLUMN

The first settlers, part two

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

