Editor's note: At a time when sports are shut down, we are taking a look (in no particular order) at some of the bizarre moments from Georgia sports history.
The Braves’ Dale Murphy called it a “fiasco,” which was an understatement. His teammate Bob Horner said there had never been anything like it. The chief umpire said it “set baseball back 50 years.”
It happened on a cloudy Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1984, when a game between the Braves and the San Diego Padres at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium turned into a series of brawls generally considered among the wildest in MLB history.
Punches were thrown by players. Beverages were thrown by fans. At least seven pitches, maybe eight, were thrown at batters’ bodies. Players were tackled to the ground. Fourteen players, managers and coaches were ejected. Five fans were arrested.
By the end of the day, Aug. 12, 1984, Braves manager Joe Torre had called Padres manager Dick Williams “an idiot,” and word had reached National League president Chub Feeney at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., of “a riot in the Atlanta game.”
Yes, this one definitely belongs in our compilation of Bizarre Moments in Georgia Sports History.
“I’ve never seen violence like that,” John McSherry, the chief of the umpiring crew, said after the game. “It’s a miracle somebody didn’t get seriously hurt.”
Pascual Perez, who two years earlier secured a place in Braves lore by getting lost on I-285, was a central figure in this chapter, too.
On the first pitch of the game, Perez hit San Diego’s Alan Wiggins, who had bunted twice for hits the day before, in the back with a fastball. Perez and the Braves maintained it was unintentional. Williams and the Padres felt it was highly intentional, perhaps stemming from some banter between Perez and Wiggins the day before or from the Braves’ desire to “intimidate” the NL West-leading Padres.
It became clear in the bottom of the second inning, on Perez’s first at-bat of the game, that the Padres, at the direction of their hard-nosed manager, intended to retaliate. No one in the crowd of 23,912 would have guessed how far they’d carry it, though.
San Diego pitcher Ed Whitson’s first pitch to Perez was behind his back. The easily excitable Perez bounded away from the plate, seemingly wielding his bat as a weapon to fend off anticipated trouble. Tensions surged as some players came onto the field from the dugouts, but order was quickly restored. Both teams got a warning from the umpires, meaning any pitch thrown at a batter thereafter could trigger an immediate ejection of the pitcher and his manager.
On most days, that would have been the end of it, a sufficient message presumably having been sent by a single retaliation attempt. But not on this crazy day.
In the fourth inning, Whitson threw three consecutive brushback pitches at Perez, missing him each time. Whitson and Williams were then ejected.
But that wasn’t the end of it, either.
In the sixth inning, Padres reliever Greg Booker’s first pitch sailed toward Perez, again missing him. Booker was ejected. At that point, the Padres had thrown five pitches at Perez over three at-bats, but still hadn’t hit him. “I’m skinny,” Perez would say after the game, explaining his elusiveness.
But in the eighth inning, on Perez’s fourth at-bat, the Padres finally hit their target.
Reliever Craig Lefferts’ first pitch to Perez drilled him in the left elbow. Tensions that had simmered all afternoon erupted. The Braves charged from their dugout toward the mound. The Padres poured out of their dugout, too. A fierce brawl broke out.
Let’s pick up the play-by-play call of the late great Braves broadcaster-turned-fight announcer-for-a-day Pete Van Wieren: “Here come the Braves! They are going after Lefferts! … We’ve got one going now! And there are some hot-tempered individuals out there. … They’ve got about five separate fights going on out on the field.”
The Padres’ Champ Summers went looking for Perez, who had sought refuge from the brawl in the Braves dugout. Horner, the Braves’ star third baseman, intercepted Summers before he could get to the pitcher. Horner was on the disabled list, his broken wrist in a cast, and earlier had been watching the game from the press box in street clothes. He went downstairs and put on his uniform when he sensed trouble brewing. As Horner detained Summers, a fan hurled a beer into the melee. Two other fans bolted on to the field, one briefly jumping on Summers’ back.
Van Wieren again: “Oh, my! Oh, my! This one is very close to getting totally out of control. … There we go again — now Gerald Perry and Tim Flannery getting into it. Or is that (Kurt) Bevacqua? … We’ve had about six or seven separate fights break out here. Security guards down on the field have a couple of fans in handcuffs, leading them off the field. … What a wild afternoon this has been.”
Order eventually was restored and the eighth inning completed.
Surely, that would end the hostilities, right? Not on this crazy day.
In the ninth inning, the Braves brought in reliever Donnie Moore. The first batter he faced was Graig Nettles. Those two had tangled during the eighth-inning fracas. So what happened on Moore’s second pitch perhaps was predictable.
Van Wieren’s play-by-play: “And that pitch hits Graig Nettles, and he is going after Donnie Moore. Here we go again! … The benches are emptying again. … My, oh my, oh my! … I have never seen a ballgame where so many separate incidents have occurred. … Goose Gossage going after Donnie Moore. … Here goes Graig Nettles after Moore (again), and he was really tackled in front of that Braves dugout. … And we’ve got another one breaking out -- Gene Garber pulling Tim Flannery away from somebody. … And we’ve got more trouble breaking out. The Padres and some fans are getting into it over by the Padre dugout.”
When that chaos subsided, the umpires ordered the dugouts and bullpens cleared of all players except those in the game or warming up to enter the game. Everyone else was sent to the clubhouses.
Finally, mercifully, center fielder Murphy made a diving catch to end the game, a 5-3 win for the Braves.
“I just wanted to get out of there,” Murphy said afterward. “All I was thinking was, ‘Let’s end it right now.’ I’m totally exhausted from that fiasco.”
“It would’ve been a lot simpler if we’d hit Perez his first time up," Padres catcher Terry Kennedy said. “The whole thing got pretty ridiculous. It’s bad to have kids watch something like this.”
Predictably, the combatants disagreed on who was to blame. The Padres blamed Perez, saying none of it would have happened if he hadn’t hit Wiggins with the game’s first pitch. The Braves blamed Williams, the Padres’ manager, contending he carried retaliation to a ridiculous extreme.
“In the event Pascual hit Wiggins on purpose, which I don’t believe now, then once they took their (first) shot at getting Pascual, it should have been over with,” Torre said after the game. “But (Williams) insisted on precipitating this whole thing and got to what could have been a riot out of the stands.”
Torre also said: “Dick Williams is an idiot. Spell that with a capital ‘I’ and a small ‘w.’ ”
Williams retorted: “At least he’s learning how to spell better.” Williams also offered: “Tell Joe Torre to stick that finger he’s pointing.”
Of the Braves’ starting pitcher, Williams said: “There is not enough mustard in the state of Georgia to cover Mr. Perez.” Said Perez: “I’m no hot dog.”
Four days later, Feeney — the National League president — suspended Williams for 10 days and fined him $10,000. Torre was suspended for three days and fined $1,000, even though umpire McSherry had said the Braves manager “did a great job by trying to keep the team under control.” In all, 18 players, managers and coaches drew fines and/or suspensions, including 12 Padres and six Braves. Perez’s fine was only $300, which incensed the Padres, who went on to reach the World Series that season.
The five arrested fans were charged with disorderly conduct, one of them also with simple battery.
Years later, Williams and Torre would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Williams died in 2011. Torre remains involved with MLB as a special assistant to the commissioner. McSherry died in 1996 and Perez in 2012.
While the brawl of Aug. 12, 1984, holds an ignominious place in Braves and Padres history, it could have been worse, and it almost was.
“About one more pitch, and you’d have probably seen a full-scale riot out there,” Horner, then the Braves’ team captain, said at the time. “Fans were getting a little crazy, and they’d probably had quite a bit to drink, and they were just about ready to come over the sides (in large numbers). I don’t think we had enough police out there to stop them.”
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