Ejecting 17 Players in One Game

The record for the largest number of participants ejected from one game is 17. The game was at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on August 12, 1984. The ejections were all made by home-plate umpire Steve Rippley, and one of the men he threw out was his current boss, Joe Torre.

In an early 2017 interview, Rippley recalled the game. “It was a beanball war. That was the gist of the whole thing. Remember Pascual Perez? He was a pitcher for Atlanta. The second baseman for San Diego was Alan Wiggins. The night before, Saturday night, Wiggins had laid down four bunts, two for base hits. I was working first base. Pascual Perez was sitting in the dugout charting and he was sitting at the first-base end of the dugout. After the third one, he started yelling at Wiggins. “Swing the bat …” You know, baseball crap. They were yelling back and forth at each other, and then the fourth one they got on each other again, screaming.

“Well, the matchup the next day, the pitcher is Pascual and the first batter is Wiggins. First pitch of the game, he hits Wiggins. That started everything going. Then Pascual came up to bat and I believe Ed Whitson couldn’t hit him. After I gave him three chances. It just escalated from there. Had he hit Pascual on the first pitch, everything would have been done. Eye for an eye. They got Wiggins, you got Pascual. OK, everything’s done. Well, he couldn’t hit Pascual and it escalated. I think I ran five sets of twos — managers and pitchers — and then we had seven guys that went in a brawl.”1

Whitson had tried to hit Perez in the second but failed, and both teams were issued warnings. Perez struck out. In the fourth, Whitson tried to hit Perez with three consecutive pitches. Perez was dancing around with the bat in his hand, and looked menacing as Rippley kept approaching him to try to calm him. The benches cleared, but there was no further problem. The first two tossed were Whitson and his manager, Dick Williams.

The fifth passed without incident, but in the sixth inning both Williams’s replacement, acting manager Ozzie Virgil Sr., and Padres pitcher Greg Booker were ejected. Greg Harris threw two innings for San Diego without incident, but with Craig Lefferts on the mound in the bottom of the eighth (the score was 5-1, Braves), Perez came up to bat again and Lefferts’ first pitch hit him on the arm. Rippley threw out Lefferts and the third San Diego skipper, acting manager Jack Krol.

As described on Retrosheet, “both benches cleared and a 10-minute brawl ensued; Pascual Perez went to the Braves bench during the brawl but Champ Summers went after Perez there; Bob Horner blocked Summers from getting to Perez and the two fought; Rick Mahler, Steve Bedrosian, Gerald Perry, Summers, and Bobby Brown ejected as a result of the brawl.” McSherry was knocked to the ground in the melee.

Rippley noted of Horner: “he was in the press box with a broken hand at the start of that game. As the game progressed, he went down and got in uniform and got in one of the fights.” He wasn’t thrown out of the game, because he wasn’t in it. He was on the DL at the time. But after seeing Perez get thrown at a third time, he went downstairs. “You didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what was going on.”2

It still wasn’t over. In the top of the ninth inning, Donnie Moore came on in relief. First batter up was Graig Nettles. Oops, hit by pitch. Rippley threw out Braves manager Torre and also Moore. But Nettles charged the mound, and four more Padres were ejected — Nettles, Kurt Bevacqua (who had been on the bench and was standing in the dugout; when hit by a beer, he charged into the stands), Tim Flannery, and Goose Gossage.

At this point, crew chief John McSherry (again, per Retrosheet) “ordered both benches cleared, sending the remaining players to their clubhouses; they were still available to play; McSherry thought about forfeiting the game but decided not to do so since the Braves had started the last brawl and McSherry did not want to give the game to the Padres, who were the instigators of the series of events.”

“We started worrying about crowd control,” McSherry said after the game. “That’s the reason we cleared both benches.”3 Policemen were positioned on the tops of both dugouts, and police later said five fans had been arrested.4

After the game, McSherry said of the brawl, “I’ve never seen violence like that. It’s a miracle somebody didn’t get seriously hurt.”5 San Diego GM Jack McKeon accused the umpires of losing control of the game. McSherry retorted, “The guy who lost control was in their dugout,” referring to Williams, who watched the last few rounds from the stands. Atlanta Constitution columnist John McGrath headed his admittedly biased column “Padres’ Williams Wanted to Play Thug for a Day.”6

Fourth on the Padres’ managerial depth chart was bullpen coach Harry Dunlop. It was he who was acting manager when the game ended.

Torre called Dick Williams “an idiot and you can spell that with a capital I,” and said, “He should be suspended for the rest of the season.”7 While he was at it, Torre added, “It was gutless. It stinks. It was Hitler-like action.”8 Dick Williams said the Braves started it, adding, “We will not be intimidated.”9 Bob Watson of the Braves declared, “It won’t end here.”

In all, five Braves were tossed and an even dozen Padres. Two guys who didn’t get thrown out were Perez and Wiggins. In fact, Perez got the win, improving his record to 11-4.

Dick Williams was suspended for 10 days and fined $10,000, and Torre for three days, fined $1,000.10 Five players were also suspended and fined, two from the Padres and three from the Braves. Seven other Padres players and the team’s first two ejected acting managers were also fined.

Torre is, in 2017, chief baseball officer for Major League Baseball. Rippley has worked as an umpire observer since 2009.

Several videos made during the game are on YouTube, the longest of which appears to be at: youtube.com/watch?v=rlHJ9ZaREmc

BILL NOWLIN, known to none as “The Old Arbiter” since he has never worked a game behind the plate, still favors the balloon chest protector for its nostalgic aesthetics. Aside from a dozen years as a college professor, his primary life’s work was as a co-founder of Rounder Records (it got him inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame). He’s written or edited more than 50 books, mostly on baseball, and has been on the Board of Directors of SABR since the magic Red Sox year of 2004.

 

Notes

1 Author interview with Steve Rippley, January 10, 2017.

2 Steve Dolan, “14 Are Ejected as Beanball War Erupts in Atlanta,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1984: C1. Different newspapers gave different numbers of how many had been ejected.

3 Gene Ballard, “Padres Go Down Fighting, Literally; Braves Win, 5-3,” Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, August 13, 1984: B5.

4 Associated Press, “Atlanta Tips Pads in Brawl-Marred Tilt,” The Oregonian (Portland), August 13, 1984: 66.

5 Chris Mortensen, “McSherry Calls Brawls the Worst He Has Ever Seen,” Atlanta Constitution, August 13, 1984: 3D.

6 John McGrath, “Padres’ Williams Wanted to Play Thug for a Day,” Atlanta Constitution, August 13, 1984: 3D.

7 Ballard.

8 “Braves, Padres Brawl, Then Say Wait ’Til Fall,” Seattle Daily Times, August 13, 1984: 18.

9 Associated Press, “Atlanta Tips Pads in Brawl-Marred Tilt.”

10 Associated Press, “NL Gives Suspensions to Williams, Torre,” Dallas Morning News, August 17, 1984: 5B.