Making A Pile — By Tommy Purser

I couldn’t come up with much of an idea for a column this week, so I decided to dust off one of my old columns and offer it here as a reprint. The column was written in April, 1994, so it’s kinda old but, nonetheless, the idea behind it continues today.
So, here it is:
The Florida Marlins and the San Francisco Giants had an altercation this weekend.
Sports announcers generally refer to such incidents as a fracas, fisticuffs, melee, scrap, scuffle, donnybrook, free-for-all or, my personal favorite; a brench-clearing brawl.
I call it “making a pile.”
Any baseball fan knows the scene:
Some pitcher throws a pitch at some batter. He doesn’t necessarily have to hit the batter, but bouncing a baseball off some part of a batter’s anatomy generally makes for better theater. The closer to the head, the more intense the apparent anger created in the batter.
The batter, in turn, throws his bat down — proof positive that he doesn’t really want to hurt the pitcher but, rather, is taking part in a long standing baseball tradition which I call, as I said, “making a pile.”
The batter, normally sporting a wretched look on his face of painfully sincere hatred, storms the mound.
At this point, the scenario may vary. The pitcher will either:
(1) Throw down his glove and run to meet the batter halfway.
(2) Stand his ground with feigned courage but actually hoping that the catcher, who by this time has thrown his mask and mitt aside and is giving mad chase to the seemingly infuriated batter, will catch the batter before he reaches the mound, or
(3) Retreats….. but never, ever farther than the outside perimeter of the pitcher’s mound. Any further retreat would be deemed cowardice, not to mention making “making a pile” more difficult.
Wherever the batter and pitcher meet, either the batter swings and the pitcher tackles, or vice versa. I have yet to ascertain the signal flashed between the two to indicate which will do which but there must be some pre-making-a-pile signal that guides their actions, because the two always end up in an embrace of some sort.
Houston’s Nolan. Ryan, you may recall, pulled a sneaky trick during his last involvement in pile making. While the batter did the embracing, Ryan wrapped one arm around the batter’s neck, and flailed away at his head with his free fist.
Usually, though, blows don’t land between the initial combatants. What normally happens is that the two embrace, fall to the ground, and all players, managers, trainers, water boys, bat boys, etc., from both squads leave the bench areas (thus the term “bench-clearing brawl”) arrive on the scene either at the very instant the batter and pitcher fall to the ground, or within three seconds, tops, and make a big pile of humanity. There then follows much pushing, shoving, cursing, uniform tugging, embracing and occasionally a punch or two is thrown. But the main object of such tradition is making a pile somewhere in the infield. I’m not sure why but the pile usually is made somewhere between the mound and first base.
No other professional sport has quite this tradition. Basketball players usually throw a punch or two with wild jumping up and down, and occasional jersey tugging. With such long arms and legs, the donnybrook generally covers a large area in a short period of time. Such bench-clearing brawls (there’s that term again) are usually broken up by more sensible peacemakers. The anger seems more genuine in basketball and the incidents usually end just like most schoolboy fights: a couple of punches are thrown, someone steps in to bring a halt to the fisticuffs, the authorities take control, and the combatants are carted off to the office for appropriate paddlings or, in this case, to the dressing rooms for review of videotape and subsequent fines, which usually amount to less than half of one percent of a game day’s pay. Making a pile is not part of professional basketball fighting tradition.
Hockey fights are more interesting: everyone clears a path and lets the two combatants flail away at one another while trying to keep their balance on their ice skates. Everyone stands back and watches until the two puck-heads are too exhausted to do each other or anyone else much harm, and then peacemakers move in to separate the combatants, and pick up the hockey sticks, gloves, masks, etc., that litter the ice in the general vicinity of the melee. There generally are no massive piles of humanity involved in hockey fights
Football melees usually involve making a crowd rather than a pile.
There isn’t much punch throwing as long as the fighters aren’t dumb enough to take off their helmets. Generally, the two bump facemasks much as two bucks rattle horns during mating season territorial fights.
There is some tackling involved, and football fights sometimes erupt into several altercations at two or more spots on the field. But usually players from both squads gather at one spot and make a big crowd of large people. Crowds are not to be confused with piles. Crowds are groups of people standing upright, piles are groups of people wallowing on the ground or each other. Football fights are generally of short duration and, again, making piles is not part of the tradition.
The thought occurred to me that this column, properly clipped from the paper and laminated, would make a great mother’s day gift for those moms who are baseball widows or, just plain ignorant of professional baseball traditions. The column could be kept close at hand and the next time a bench-clearing brawl occurs, Mom can better understand the action by reading the column while watching the pile making.
The paper sells for 40 cents ….. and we do laminating cheap.