Last week, Andrew McCutchen, star outfielder for the San Francisco Giants, made a video in response to a bench-clearing brawl between his team and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Fights are not necessarily a rare thing in Major League Baseball, with its grueling season and high-stakes. But McCutchen diffuses this brawl and brawls in general, giving an outfielder’s perspective. Why fight at all? As someone physically distant from the action in the field, an outfielder has a keen grasp on just how meaningless violence is. “Let’s just play baseball, not fight,” he says.

When we’re in the heat and chaos of anger, it might serve us well to think of it as an outfielder might — to see what’s happening from a distance, tapping into our capacity for humor and the larger context, if we can. McCutchen’s candid video is a small wonder:

Andrew McCutchen's breakdown of the Giants and Dodgers brawl is the best thing ever ???

Posted by Baseball King on Wednesday, August 15, 2018