Wallace, Davis in pregame phony fracas
June 9th, 2008, 4:30 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Dan Zeiger
Arizona State’s two best hitters — good friends who plan to go on vacation together sometime after the season — were involved in a scuffle as the Sun Devils were on the field before Game 3 of the Tempe Super Regional on Monday.
The incident between third baseman Brett Wallace and first baseman Ike Davis, however, was a joke.
The two sold it, as they jawed and pointed to one another while being separated by their teammates, some of whom ended up on the ground in a ruckus that was caught by ESPN cameras.
“We wanted to do it to loosen up the team a little bit and maybe get the other team to think about other things,” Davis said after the game. “It didn’t work, but it was fun.”
The Sun Devils did the same thing – Travis Buck and Jeff Larish were the “combatants” then — before a tournament game against Coastal Carolina in 2005.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
If memory serves the fake fight betweek Travis Buck and Jeff Larish did not result in a national title either. Former amateur boxer Pat Murphy is 0-for-2 with theatrical fake fights between stars to motivate the team.
Murph apparently needs assistance with motivating teams with several players drafted to the big leagues to stay focused in the post season.
Perhaps Murhpy and his coaching staff should reenact the Brother Bluto’s “Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor” motivational speech from Animal House or Bill Murray’s motivational speech from Stripes when the reluctant Private motivated the troops in the absence of the injured Sgt. Hulka. All of this could be done in the locker room or in the batting cages out of sight of the public and national TV.
It would definately be rolling on the floor hilarious AND the big benefit would be that this motivational strategy would not be seen as a negative on national TV.
Last I heard, Coach Meyers didn’t have to stage a fight between Katie Burkhart and Kaitlin Cochran to motivate the softball team to crush everyone in their way. In fact, I believe Coach Meyers called time and cracked a joke to the batter to losen up the tension at the plate during an at-bat. That too was caught in national TV except Coach Meyers was successful and received praise from the player and commentators on his approach to keeping the team loose to play well.
If a fake fight between stars is all Murphy has in his bag of tricks to motivate the players then perhaps it’s time for him to take a dive in the ring an go elsewhere.