A12| Friday, August 2, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALLon
Thursday suspended six players
for an ugly bench-clearing brawl
between the Cincinnati Reds and
Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday
night. Pirates pitcher Keone Kela
got10gamesforthrowingapitch
around the head of Derek Dietrich.
Reds reliever Amir Garrett re-
ceived eight games for inciting the
fight by charging the Pittsburgh
dugout. Yasiel Puig got three
games even though he doesn’t play
for the Reds anymore--he was
traded from Cincinnati to Cleve-
land during Tuesday’s game.
As severe as those penalties
were, another suspension stood
out above the rest: the six-game
ban given to Reds manager David
Bell. The reasons given for such a
lengthy suspension were numer-
ous. Bell returned to the field after
being thrown out an inning earlier.
He escalated the incident with ag-
gressive behavior in the middle of
the scrum.
But MLB also gave another ex-
planation in the statement an-
nouncing its decision: Bell’s “nu-
merous ejections this season.”
Bell’s managerial debut this
year has been almost impossible to
ferent and have happened for a
different reason and circum-
stances. You lump them together,
it’s significant. Each one has its
own story.”
Besides Bell, there have been six
other rookie managers to be
ejected from at least eight games,
according to the statistics website
Baseball-Reference, though none
since Bill Rigney of the New York
Giants in 1956. Roger Bresnahan
(1909 St. Louis Cardinals) and Bill
Dahlen (1910 Brooklyn Superbas)
hold the mark for first-year skip-STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESSpers with 10 ejections apiece.
The good news for Bell is that
with two months left in the sea-
son, there’s still plenty of time for
him to make history. In fact, if he
tries hard enough, he could even
set an all-time record for ejections.
Nobody has ever been ejected
more than 11 times in a season, an
honor held by John McGraw
(1905), Dahlen (1911) and Bobby
Cox (2001), the true ejection king:
Cox was tossed from 158 regular-
season games in his Hall-of-Fame
career.New England Patriots
quarterback Tom Brady
turns 42 on Saturday.SPORTS
FOOTBALL|JASON GAY
David Bell, left, yells as he is ejected by Carlos Torres, right, on July 19.GARY LANDERS/ASSOCIATED PRESSfathom. Though he wasn’t in the
dugout for it, Thursday night’s
matchup with the Atlanta Braves
was, officially, his 107th contest in
charge of the Reds. He had been
ejected from eight of them, or 7.5%
of all the games in his managerial
career thus far.
A third-generation big-leaguer,
Bell grew up in a baseball club-
house. His father, Buddy, played 18
seasons and then managed for an-
other nine. His grandfather, Gus,
made four All-Star teams as an
outfielder in the 1950s and ‘60s.
All of that, plus his own 12-year
playing career, means David Bell
should understand the ins and
outs of dealing with umpires by
now.
Yet Bell can’t seem to go two
weeks without being kicked out of
a game. He has been run for argu-
ing balls and strikes five times—
four times after sprinting out on
the field in defense of a player and
once for yelling from the dugout.
His ejection on July 19, his seventh
of the season, set a new Reds sin-
gle-season record, surpassing
Clark Griffith’s six, in 1909 and
1910.
Nothing sets Bell off quite like
the Pirates, the Reds’ division ri-
vals with whom they have an on-going feud. He’s been given the
heave-ho from three of his team’s
13 meetings against the Pirates,
starting on April 7, his ninth game
at the helm. In that one, Bell was
ejected after Pittsburgh right-
hander Chris Archer threw a pitch
behind Dietrich, an act Bell be-
lieved was intentional, sparking
his wrath. Afterward, a Reds tele-
vision announcer described Bell as
“very mild-mannered.” In May, Bell
was ejected after one of his best
players, third baseman Eugenio
Suárez, was hit by a pitch with no
consequences to the Pirates.
Bell’s latest dustup with Pitts-
burgh on Tuesday was a continua-
tion of that. He was ejected in the
bottom of the eighth after com-
plaining about a strike call he dis-
agreed with, but the real fireworks
happened an inning later, when he
stormed out of the dugout to par-
ticipate in the brawl. It was Bell’s
eighth ejection—or one more ejec-
tion than he had in 1,403 games as
aplayer.
“I haven’t looked too much into
it,” Bell told Cincinnati reporters
last month. “Each situation has
been so different. It’s never some-
thing I set out to want to do. Obvi-
ously, you want to avoid it at all
costs. Truly, each one has been dif-BYJAREDDIAMOND
Baseball’s Most Ejected Manager
The NFL’s Age-Defying Quarterback
Two significant mo-
ments for anti-aging
happened in America
this week.
The first was the re-
lease of the trailer for
“The Irishman,” Martin Scorsese’s
upcoming mob movie for Netflix
starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino
and Joe Pesci. The film uses inno-
vative “de-aging” special effects to
make the actors appear younger
than they are in real life, so in-
stead of 75-year-old Robert DeNiro
playing the part of a gangster,
you’re watching a DeNiro who
looks, well, 57 years old. It’s said
to be a jarring, industry-altering
advancement, and if it means
we’re going get a “You’ve Got
Mail” remake starring Clark Gable
and Bette Davis, I can’t wait.
The second significant moment
for anti-aging was that Tom Brady
gave a preseason press chit-chat.
Yeah. Him. Father Time’s hand-
some cousin is back for another
round. Brady is 41—but just for
another minute. He turns 42 on
Saturday. He is the oldest non-
placekicker in the NFL, six months
removed from being the oldest
quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
He’s 18 years older than Cleveland
phenom Baker Mayfield, who’s try-
ing to make the Browns un-laugh-
able, and five years older than
Pete Buttigieg, who is running for
President.
It’s wild. How long are we going
to keep doing this? Brady has a
Super Bowl ring the same age as
Billie Eilish. There isn’t a single
Patriot left over from his early
campaigns. There have been four
Presidents and at least a dozen
and a half iPhones released since
he was drafted. NFL players aren’t
supposed to have careers like this.
Football is a punishing sport
where involuntary retirements are
the norm. Beloved Brady target
Rob Gronkowski just walked away,
citing the physical grind...at age
29.
If you’re a Patriots/Brady hater
looking for signs of physical attri-
tion, if you’re hoping the impulses
of middle age have finally caught
up, and that Brady spent a few
months on the couch eating Pring-
les and watching “Fixer Upper”:
sorry. He looks better. He bulked
up this off-season. Brady has been
on a pliability kick for the past few
years; he often sounds like a
groovy pilates instructor. But get-
ting banged around the pocket
made him flex in the weight room,
too.
“I wanted to get a little bigger
this year, and put on a few morepounds and try to absorb the hits
a little bit more,” he said. “I
worked pretty hard at that.”
He has a new haircut because
he always has a new haircut. This
one is a little Maverick in “Top
Gun,” short on the sides and kept
neat at the top. He skipped some
voluntary workouts this off-season
to spend more time with his fam-
ily—one of the few seniority perks
he allows himself.“The last couple years, it’s been
great for me to spend the off-sea-
sons with them, and really fill up
that bucket and give them the
time, support, and love that they
need,” Brady said. “When I’m here
doing my thing, my wife’s got to
hold down the fort, and she has
put a lot on hold over the years to
support my dreams. I feel like it’s
my responsibility as a husband to
do the same for her.”
So he’s got the work-life balancething cornered, too. I can under-
stand if all of this makes you nau-
seous. You want Brady to trudge
into camp with bags under his
eyes, a layer of belly flab, and lis-
ten to him moan about having to
endure another training camp
speech from Grumpy Lobster Boat
Captain Bill Belichick. But Brady
sounds like a draftee showing up
for his first week on the job. Ev-
erything’s upbeat, everything’s
cool, even the miserably humid
midsummer weather.
Brady’s contract “situation”—
he’s entering the last year of his
current deal—doesn’t seem to be
much of a situation. Patriots fans
are so spoiled, they love whipping
themselves into a frenzy about
problems that aren’t really prob-
lems; they sound like plutocrats
complaining about the pillows
aboard a Gulfstream. The Patriots
and Brady have had numerous con-
tract stare-downs over the years,
and something invariably gets
done, because both sides know it
has to get done. Where is Brady
going to go? To the Vikings? The
Raptors? His idol Joe Montana did
wind up in Kansas City, but Brady
feels like a Patriot for life.
There are changes, to be sure.
There are new faces and high-pro-
file absentees, like Gronkowski,New England’s human bouncy cas-
tle. The Patriots will once more re-
adjust their offense and Brady will
have to figure out how to make it
work.
Where he summons the motiva-
tion from, I don’t know. Brady al-
legedly still carries a chip from be-
ing an overlooked college player...
can that really be true? He has six
championships. He has made a for-
tune and lives a dreamy life with
his supermodel wife, Gisele Bünd-
chen. Maybe he’ll get himself fired
up from a “snub” in the new NFL
100 rankings, where Brady’s peers
ranked him the sixth(!) best player
in the league, behind quarterbacks
Drew Brees and Patrick Mahomes
and even running back Todd Gur-
ley, who was a vapor in the Super
Bowl the Patriots just won.
Here’s a prediction: There will
come a point during this season,
probably early on, when the Patri-
ots slip a bit, and the vultures
come out for Brady, wondering if
it’s the end. That’s a ritual now. It
happened last season, and we
know how last season ended. The
last man on the field was the old-
est one: Tom Brady, who is still
playing football, still thrilled to be
doing it, and is still nearly 35
years younger than, well, Robert
DeNiro.Patriots quarterback Tom Brady enlivens another training camp with a rookie’s enthusiasm—and a new layer of muscle
Father Time’s handsome
cousin is back for
another run at a Super
Bowl title.