Remember the circumstances?

September 6th in Milwaukee, in the heat of a highly contested menage trios style pennant race between the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Colorado Rockies, in the twelve inning of a 1-1- game between the Brewers and Giants Prince fielder hit a "bowl-off" home run.

Yesterday in the first inning of the Giants vs. Brewers Cactus League game, Giants Barry Zito hit Prince Fielder in the back with his first pitch in an obvious retaliation for last year's staged "bowling" antics.

Here's the problem I have. If you are going to hit Fielder in retaliation how about have Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, Tim Lincecum or some other fire-baller do it? Zito can't break a pane of glass with a fastball. That was like having an infant spit up on him!

As Fielder began his trot to first base, he picked the ball off the ground and dismissively flipped it toward Zito. Even though the ball appeared to strike him square in the back, I'm not certain he even knew he was hit until the umpire awarded him first base!

Home-plate umpire Ted Barrett proceeded to say something to Zito, but he did not warn the benches.

Zito then struck out Casey McGehee to end the inning and walked close to Fielder on his way to the dugout, but they did not exchange words. Of course nothing was said, what words could have been uttered? "Hey Fielder, if you pull that crap again I'll hit you with my sweeping curve!"??

After the game, Anthony Witrado of the Journal-Sentinel asked Fielder if the celebration was worth the ball in the back. Fielder had this to say.

"Hell yeah, that's something I did with me and my teammates. It has nothing to do with them. You're damn right it was worth it."

Well at least for Zito's sake Fielder didn't embarrass him by laughing at the bean ball thrown by him.

Brewers pitches Jeff Suppan did not retaliate against Pablo Sandoval in the bottom of the first which would have at least added some drama to the situation, but we got nothing.

It's a shame the Giants didn't wait until the regular season when they could have done it after facing him a few times when he wouldn't have expected it. As it is now, the spectacle with a potential for some real fire has now come full circle and ended with a whimpering dud as the players pitifully policed themselves in their common method of communication.

That sucked, I was hoping for so much more. - Peter Costa

Pete is a serious Rotisserie participant playing the same league with the same guys for 18 years. Not only has Peter never finished in the money; he's now finished last 14 times and no higher than 10th (in a league with 14 guys). Join us in following Peter's trials, tribulations and frustrations, as he attempts to navigate his way out of the basement again in 2010.

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