Tyler Cowen posts the abstract of an interesting new paper on violence in the NHL. This post reminded me of a brief paper idea I had recently and was encouraged to pursue further. The question at hand was, why do fights clear the bench in baseball but not necessarily other sports? Let’s assume the above anomaly is true, my claim is that fights in baseball typically involve the most highly valued asset of the team – high paid pitcher v. high paid batter. In this clearing the benches to involve the whole team in the fight has two rational motivations. 1) Drawing the fight into a full out brawl saves face in front of fans and the opposing team while protecting those highly valued assets. The individual fight may subside in the chaos of the brawl but no one appears to have backed down. 2) Playing the next game without the high valued player may mean a potential loss, better to involve the whole team and take some other form of dispersed penalty.
Anyone know where to hunt down good data on baseball fights or fights in other sports: hockey, basketball, rugby, etc???