In case you hadn’t heard around the Internet today, baseball player and Washington Nationals outfielder Nyjer Morgan caused a bit of a stir last night against the Florida Marlins by charging the mound and then getting his clock cleaned by Marlins first baseman Gaby Sanchez while charging after pitcher Chris Volstad.
While we’re certainly not Hardball Talk over here, there’s actually a tie-in to hockey and one that helps make Sanchez’s blindside takedown a bit easier for Morgan to handle. You see, Nyjer Morgan wasn’t always a baseball player, he used to play junior hockey for the WHL Regina Pats.
If you’re wondering if Morgan was able to pick up any of his hot temper hints from his teammates back in his 1999-2000 season with the Pats, you better believe he did as he was teammates with current NHLers Blues defenseman Barret Jackman, former Blue Jackets and Sens defenseman Filip Novak and a guy by the name of Derek Boogaard. Don’t suppose that Nyjer Morgan learned how to keep his head up in Pats practice though given the way he got cleaned out by Sanchez. Doing that in practice with the Boogie Man on the ice might’ve ended any career attempt for him.
Of course, as one might suspect, there’s always one writer who will take everything out of context in hilarious fashion and try to blame Morgan’s recent wrestling-heel behavior and blame it on hockey. Enter the Phanatic Magazine saying it was Morgan’s hockey upbringing that made him violent.
That’s why it should come as any surprise to any baseball fan who knows the game of hockey that the Morgan-Volstad meeting which sparked the brawl played out the way it did. Though clearly at a size disadvantage, Morgan faced bigger and more motivated kids in Moose Jaw and Red Deer than Volstad, so, of course he wasn’t going to back down.
He came in with elbows up and right hand cocked in battle position, like smaller players are taught when facing a fight. So what if he didn’t land it the way he wanted? He got the only shot in. He took care of the situation the way he was trained.
Nyjer Morgan might have some issues, but growing up a hockey player isn’t one of them. It just makes him a much more interesting person to follow in baseball as far as us hockey-minded people are concerned. After all, we never saw former Kings draft pick and Braves all-time superstar Tom Glavine ever throw a punch before.