The textbook example of a grudge 🤬

It was a Supreme Court justice named Potter Stewart who — when asked to define obscenity — said, “I know it when I see it.”

I tend to believe something similar about a grudge: I know it when I feel it.

It is visceral, my body tightening at the mere mention of a name. Lips pursed, I’ll shake my head just a bit, my jaw muscles tightened, but teeth not quite clenched, my dislike radiating away from me.

These sensations, however, are not particularly useful in defining what a grudge actually is.

That’s pretty good. It captures what I believe to be the central ingredient of a grudge, which is an inability or unwillingness to let go. It’s also worth noting, that I no-showed the initial interview I’d scheduled with Dr. Mezulis, incorrectly thinking we were talking at 11 a.m. Pacific when the appointment was 11 a.m. Eastern. Being the kind and generous person she is, she did not harbor a grudge and was still willing to answer my questions via email.

I also thought that Dr. Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at Penn, offered at particularly graceful definition on the podcast “No Stupid Questions”:

If you ask me, though, the quote that best defines a grudge was uttered by a baseball pitcher from the Dominican Republic. He stood 6 foot 4 and he was fairly straight forward in declaring both his dislike of a former teammate named Omar Vizquel, and his plans to express this dislike by throwing a baseball at Vizquel any chance he got.

Now THAT is a grudge, one that demonstrates with unusual clarity the thing that distinguishes a grudge from other forms of inter-personal conflict such as a rivalry or a feud. In a grudge, at least one side simply refuses to let go of their animosity. They stay mad. At least Mesa did. For years, and while he didn’t wind up hitting Vizquel 10 times, it wasn’t for lack of desire on his part.

Grudgery Case Study No. 1

Jose Mesa didn’t always dislike Omar Vizquel. In fact they were teammates in Cleveland in the 1990s and — for a while at least — friends.

They had lockers next to one another even though they played different positions with Vizquel being an acrobatic shortstop and Mesa an imposing relief pitcher. Each was an important component to a team that was two (2) outs away from winning the 1997 World Series. Those two outs would be a sticking point, however.

Mesa took the mound in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7, Cleveland leading the Marlins 2-1. Mesa gave up two singles in the first three batters he faced, giving Florida runners on first and third with one out. Craig Counsell hit a fly ball, and while Cleveland outfielder Manny Ramirez caught the ball for the second out, it was deep enough that the runner on third tagged up and scored, tying the game 2-2. Mesa got out of the inning, but the game was now in extra innings where Florida won it in the 11th.

Five years after that, here’s how Vizquel described that moment in his memoir:

This was … unusual. Professional athletes almost always avoid blaming anyone directly for a loss, especially teammates. Usually, they minimize individual accountability by saying things like:

• “No one play decided that game.”

• “We wouldn’t have even been in that situation if not for how good he had been for us all season.”

• “Everyone on the team had something they could have done better.”

The fact Vizquel’s criticism of Mesa appeared on Page One of his memoir didn’t help though in his defense perhaps he was thinking people would have forgotten all about it by the time they were done.

Mesa did not forget. At this point in his career, he was pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies. During a June series between the teams, Vizquel came up with Mesa on the mound. The first pitch was inside, but missed Vizquel’s elbow. The second pitch hit Vizquel in the middle of his back. In the vernacular of modern baseball, Mesa “dotted” Vizquel, meaning he was hit with a pitch thrown at the meat of his body as opposed to a “beaning” which would indicate a batter being struck in the head.

This did not seem to surprise anyone.

“Yeah, he meant to hit him,” said Charlie Manuel, Vizquel’s manager with Cleveland. “I think it was on purpose.”

Now, throwing a pitch that strikes an opposing batter is a central component of baseball’s long-held informal system for punishment and payback. When an opposing player does something his opponents deem improper, he may then get pegged with a pitch. However, this pitch is not to be aimed at his head.

Isn’t this against the rules? Absolutely. A pitcher is forbidden from deliberately hitting a batter with a pitch. However, it is difficult to prove intent and there’s a long history of players saying a certain pitch “got away from them” to explain a suspicious plunking.

Mesa declined to speak to reporters after the game, and Vizquel was not in the team’s clubhouse after the game. Mesa was fined $500.

In most instances, that would be the end of things. Player A did something that made Player B mad; Player B (or his team) peg Player A with a pitch. Player A does not make a big fuss about this, instead taking his plunking and proceeding to first base. There’s even a term for this. It’s called “wearing” a pitch.

However, Mesa was not satisfied, and it was at this point the nature of the conflict changed.

The Begrudging

That’s the term I’ve invented for the moment when a rivalry or a feud turns into something that is a couple of shades darker and people start saying things like “these two have a history” or declaring there to be “bad blood.”

The following year, Mesa was still with Philadelphia while Vizquel was in Cleveland, and because both of those teams conduct spring training in Florida, they were scheduled to play a practice game in March.

It seems that the men in charge of these two baseball teams seemed to be aware that Mesa still had a desire for some sort of payback and so the managers made sure the two did not face each other, Cleveland removing Vizquel from the game before Mesa entered.

“The best way to stop this,” Phillies general manager Ed Wade would observe later, “is to not provide a setting where something can happen.”

After missing out on a chance to face Mesa in that spring-training game, the pitcher spoke about Vizquel for the first time since hitting him with a pitch the year before.

“I won’t try to hit him in the head, but I’ll hit him,” Mesa said. “And if he charges me, I’ll kill him. If I face him 10 more times, I’ll hit him 10 times. Every time.”

This was the point at which it became clear we were dealing with a grudge with Mesa openly stating that he was not going to let this thing go despite the fact that Vizquel was openly acknowledging he erred in publishing that statement in his book.

“It came out kinda strange, kinda weird,” Vizquel said, according to Jayson Stark’s story for ESPN.com. “That could have hurt somebody's feelings, the way it came out. And I didn't mean it with that intent. But it's too late now."

Vizquel even said he’d agree to fight Mesa, who was a significantly bigger man, if that would make his former teammate feel better. As for an apology?

“I don't think he's the type of man who would take an apology," Vizquel said. "He's not the sort of guy you could go over to and say, 'Sorry for what I wrote.' "

This assessment turned out to be entirely correct.

"If he comes to apologize, I will punch him right in the face,” Mesa said. “And then I'll kill him. If you're a writer and you want to write a good book, you don't write a story about somebody else.”

It should be noted that this is not the standard by which most authors are judged. Then again, very few subjects of literary takedowns are capable of throwing an inanimate object in excess of 90 mph as Mesa was.

For three years, circumstances and managerial decisions conspired to prevent a head-to-head matchup. Then, in April 2006, Mesa was on the mound for the Colorado Rockies when who should come up to the plate but Vizquel, whom Mesa recognized despite the fact Vizquel was now dressed up as a member of the San Francisco Giants.

Want to guess what happened?

Yep. Mesa hit him.

Afterward, no one had any illusions about what happened. The umpire, however, said that during the game, his crew was not initially aware of the underlying hostility between the two, which might actually been true. It had been three years since Mesa publicly declared his grudge.

This time, Mesa wound up getting suspended four games and wound up talking to the president of the National League.

Mesa conceded that going forward, he would simply try to get Vizquel out. The two faced each other three more times that season, and Mesa managed to refrain from plunking Vizquel in any of those at-bats. In fact, the last time they faced each other that season, Vizquel singled with the bases loaded.

Like most grudges, there is more to it, and if you’re interested in every little granular detail — including a near fight in ‘99 — I’ve put together a comprehensive timeline of the beef. However, I also believe we’ve got enough information to move to the scorecards.

Judge the grudge

Intensity: Enough to make you sweat 🤬🤬🤬 

Stakes: Fairly low. There was a friendship involved and lots of tough talk, but no one was hurt and nothing ever happened outside the context of baseball.

Humor: At least three chuckles. 😂😂😂 One grown man who was paid millions of dollars to play a game turned his memoir into a burn book and then another grown man who was paid millions of dollars to play a game never got over it.

Pick a side: I know the logical and mature perspective is to state that Mesa was being ridiculous, and he was. Throwing baseballs at another human being can be dangerous.

However …

There is a part of me — one I’m not as embarrassed of as I should be — that finds what Mesa did not just funny, but kind of admirable. Yeah, admirable, and the reason I say “feels” is because it is more of a gut reaction than anything else.

Feel free to add your assessment. Don’t worry, this is a safe zone. We can all be a little messy here. After all, I’m telling you about all my Old Testament inclinations.

There is something I find viscerally appealing about score-settling in spite of the fact that I was raised to see revenge as a hollow and toxic goal. In fact, revenge is often characterized like a disease that can consume an individual, and you could absolutely apply that framework to Mesa.

But if I’m being honest, I’m definitely more sympathetic to Mesa than to Vizquel in this story.