Blast From The Past

I was browsing around YouTube today when I found the following clip.  It is the full, uncut footage from the Yankees-Orioles on May 19, 1998, when the gutless Armando Benitez hit Tino Martinez.

A few things stick out at me:

• The stadium was empty.  I know it was a middle-of-the-week night game, but the left field bleachers were empty and the upper tier was a ghost town.
• What a shot by Bernie Williams.  I definitely miss those upper tier homers.
• You really don't see baseball brawls like this anymore, mostly because the umpires have taken too much control over regulating games with the "warning system."  Joe Torre was always very vocal about his opposition to this, yet he seems to have done very little to try to change the system since joining MLB's front office.  In this instance, the umpires stayed out of it until the very end, at which point they merely got involved to ensure that the game would get going again.  They did toss Benitez immediately, since it was pretty clear that Benitez hit him intentionally and threw behind Tino.
• I'm not sure I've ever seen such camraderie amongst teammates.  In an age where players are worried about contracts and not getting hurt in order to potentially make more money in incentives, Tino's teammates went out and took it right to Benitez.  After Graeme Lloyd, Jeff Nelson, and Scott Brosius managed to get few weak hits, Darryl Strawberry blindsided Benitez with a left hook.
• I remember George Steinbrenner being interviewed after the game and he was so proud of them.  If I recall correctly he said "I'm proud of them.  Aren't you proud of them?"
• Later that season, there was another brawl, although not of that magnitude.  I believe Roger Clemens hit Scott Brosius and Hideki Irabu retaliated.  The Yankees went on to lose the game, but proved once again that they were a team to be reckoned with.
• The best part of the whole thing was when Tim Raines hit the first pitch after the brawl in to the right field bleachers.

I was convinced for a long time that Tino was never the same player after the brawl.  His average and power declined over the next two years and although he had a resurgence in 2001, he never came close to being the middle of the order offensive force that he was during his first few years with the Yankees.  Through the first 38 games of that season, he hit .326 with 6 homers and 37 RBIs, with an OBP of .415.  That's a pace of almost an RBI a game!  From May 22 through the end of July, he hit only .178 with a .267 OBP and only drove in 20 runs.  From May 22 through the rest of the season, he hit only .264 with an OBP of .332.  He still hit 22 homers and drove in 86 runs, but it seems clear that he wasn't the same.