The Detroit Tigers And Minnesota Twins Absolutely Threw Down On This Day In 1982

Anyone who has watched more than a little baseball has probably seen an example of the sport's version of a 'brawl.' Typically, it will only go as far as the batter being held back by the pitcher.

Sometimes, it will go as far as the benches clearing, which also provides us baseball's funniest tradition: the emptying of the bullpens. I always enjoy watching the two teams' relief pitchers running side by side to get to the action on the field. Why not just battle each other in the outfield?

This was not the case on this day, May 14th, in 1982, however. Instead, the crowd at Tiger Stadium witnessed a pair of full-on, knuckles-out brawls.

ROUND ONE

The first melee happened when Twins pitcher Pete Redfern hit Chet Lemon with a pitch, sparking a fight that led to a delay of 20 minutes. Redfern went up an in on Lemon, and I have to assume there was already some bad blood built up based on the instant rage from Lemon.

(Videos of the brawl are not embeddable, but you can see the fight in its full glory HERE and HERE.)

Lemon takes down a turtling Redfern before being piled-on by Kent Hrbek, Tim Laudner and the rest of the Twins' infield. While the fourth inning brawl featured a lot of pushing, shoving an jawing, the fight that came later was an all-out fracas.

ROUND TWO

With the game tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 11th, Twins reliever Ron Davis went up-and-in on Enos Cabell and all heck broke loose. Huge punches were thrown, players were tackled and there was even a flying-ninja kick from Tigers pitcher (and the winner of the game in the box score) Dave Rozema, who ended up blowing out his knee with the maneuver.

In the end, five players were ejected - three from Detroit and two from Minnesota, and eight players/coaches were fined.

Tigers manager Sparky Anderson was among those fined by American League President Lee MacPhail. According to UPI, Anderson had no qualms with the penalty.