Baseball players are the world's biggest meatheads. A player admires his home run? Throw a ball at his face. An athlete in a totally different sport talks trash? Throw a ball at his face. A fellow union member files a lawsuit in a last-ditch effort to salvage $25 million? THROW A BALL AT HIS FACE. RESPECT THE GAME.


Yahoo's Jeff Passan and Tim Brown have the inside story of the MLB Players' Association representatives' response to Alex Rodriguez suing the union, and it's pretty much what you'd expect.

"When [Rodriguez] gets up to bat, you can hit him and hit him hard," one player on the conference call told Yahoo Sports. "That's what I'd do. He sued us. Jhonny Peralta and Nelson Cruz screwed up. You know what? They owned up to it. They took their medicine. "[Rodriguez] needs to be scared of coming back and facing people he sued. If he can't fear the wrath of getting kicked out or not being included, he's going to be forced out."


Keep in mind that this is Plan B.

Plan A, with near unanimous backing among union reps on the Jan. 13 conference call, was to kick Rodriguez out of the union. According to Yahoo, the idea was raised by the very first player to speak, and even after being told by executives that wasn't an option, more and more players threw their support behind it.

"That's what everyone was thinking," the player said. "We wanted to get on this call and not let him back. [To say,] 'This is our game and we don't want you in it.'"

I get why they're angry. Alex Rodriguez is scorching the earth in his attempt to overturn the most serious PED punishment in baseball history, handed down via a process that he argues was capricious and unfair. (He also believes the union didn't do much on his behalf, and he's probably right on that count.)

But suing the MLBPA wasn't personal. As Craig Calcaterra noted last week, labor law requires a plaintiff to name the union as a defendant when he sues his employer for breach of contract. THROW A BALL AT HIS FACE ANYWAY.


Sources: MLB Players Association would expel Alex Rodriguez – if it could [Yahoo]