Just a day after I wrote about the effect that the Cubs’ four-game sweep over the Brewers might have on the two teams involved, the frustration boiled over in Milwaukee’s game last night.  No doubt you have already seen the footage.  Prince Fielder and Manny Parra had some sort of disagreement, a few words in the dugout resulted in a hefty push from the hefty Prince, followed by another swipe before the rest of the Brewers dragged him away from the somewhat bemused pitcher.

The Cubs, cowering in a frightening thunder storm at Wrigley, would have looked on with a smile.  A brief shoving match during the heat of a game isn’t quite the mental blow-out as something like Kevin Keegan’s infamous ‘love it’ speech, but the emotions were the same.  This is a team feeling the heat and losing their composure.  

After letting a division lead crumble to the Cubs last season, questions will be asked whether the Brewers can cope with the pressure?  As the manager, Ned Yost is expected to lead his team through difficult periods and he’s going to have to earn his money now to get Milwaukee back on track.

Yost’s response to the confrontation was to trot out the line that is used every time two members of the same sporting team are involved in a public spat: these sort of things happen all the time.  His exact words were “It’s between us, and it’s not a big deal. And it’s not the first time it ever happened, and it won’t be the last”.  In ESPN’s report of the game, Manny Parra was quoted saying exactly the same thing: ” ‘Stuff happens like that all the time,’ Parra said. ‘We’re not too concerned about it’”.

It’s natural for the people involved to want to play down the incident; the Brewers are having enough problems without fuelling a media circus.  Pass it off as ‘no big deal’ and hopefully it will all be forgotten in a day or two.  A few wins will soon accomplish this, but a poor run of form will only serve to keep the issue in the background, waiting to become a problem again.

To get anywhere in sports, you have to be a competitive person.  When mixed with the intense pressure that sport at the highest-level brings, it’s understandable that tempers are frayed at times.  You would hope that it doesn’t quite happen “all the time”, because that wouldn’t be a great endorsement of the players’ ability to stay in control of their emotions.  And you would certainly hope that not too many teams have mindless thugs like Joey Barton in their ranks.  Nevertheless, the odd altercation is bound to crop up; it’s just a shame this one took place in the view of a TV camera.

The Brewers are going through a bad time of things at the moment and, strange as it may sound, an incident like this can sometimes have a positive effect once the dust has settled.  In many tense situations, you need the matter to come to a head before you can deal with it and then move on.  Maybe the incident was a necessary part of recovering from the four-game sweep?  That’s what fans in Milwaukee will be hoping anyway.

The Cubs are no strangers to public bust-ups themselves, with Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett memorably coming to blows last June.  They ended up trading Barrett soon after, although it’s inconceivable that the Brewers would want to part with Fielder or Parra in the same way.  More than anything Barrett was seemingly on borrowed time already due to his performances on the field.  Fairly or not, the player’s worth to the team will often determine how the organization responds in these circumstances.

Parra and Fielder will no doubt shake hands and move on from the incident and Ned Yost will try to use it as a way to spark some life back into the Brewers.  That won’t stop the Cubs from believing that the psychological advantage of sweeping their rivals is in full effect.

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