There is a Reason Hockey Has Fights
A brief explanation of hockey fights and how other sports handle similar problems.
A logical person would assume fighting in hockey is not only unnecessary but some sort of exploitation to generate attention. Nothing more than a sideshow to bring people to the otherwise regional sport.
In college hockey, they don’t have fights. In fact, they don’t allow fights in any other sport that isn’t “fighting”. In the NBA if you throw a punch odds are you will be suspended the rest of the season. $10s of millions of dollars lost to motivate players to ‘keep their cool’ works as a very strong ‘calming tool’.
Even in football one punch and you are thrown out. Maybe not for too long, but missing half a game in the NFL can mean your team is playing without a starter so your teammates self-police to keep guys on the field.
Now in baseball, if you punch another person you may not miss the rest of a season, but you will miss a good number of games. However, baseball is a weird sport and they have an equivalent to Hockey fights. They have these incredibly important “unwritten rules” and at certain times, in certain situations, they become life and death serious.
Let me explain.
They don’t allow guys to fight each other, but if a pitcher hits a batter with a pitch it only…
