Smackie, indulge me in a hypothetical. Yankees are closing out their season with a three game stand against the dogshit Texas Rangers. If Tony Beasley instructed his pitchers to intentionally walk Aaron Judge every at bat in the doubleheader today and then stated his intention in the postgame presser to do the same in the final game of the season tomorrow, what would the reaction be from various baseball stakeholders (the writers, the Yankees, etc) be overnight? Would he be fired immediately? Would the commissioners office step in? And on a second level, from an eyes and ears and column inches and minutes on Sportscenter perspective, would this be actually in the best interests of baseball?
(1) First, I don't think his players would go along with that, and if he took them out it would be AWESOME to watch, but he would definitely get fired.
(2) Yes, the league would probably suspend him, but he would/could appeal. The Rangers would probably fire him if he appealed because it's in Texas and ticket sales would be impacted if Judge wasn't hitting.
(3) The Yankees and the NY Media would absolutely lose their shit and it would be fun to watch. This would be the main reason why I would do it.
(4) The Sportscenter angle is interesting. Many hot takes, many people taking different sides, but yes, so long as Beasley never wanted to be a head coach again, it would make people talk about baseball like they haven't in a long time....
