Jonathan Papelbon Suspended for Being Giant Asshole

By now you've seen what already appears to be the most enduring and representative image of the 2015 Washington Nationals: Jonathan Papelbon choking out Bryce Harper in the dugout after Harper popped out in the eighth inning against the Phillies. Papelpon has effectively been suspended for the remainder of the season, thanks to his existing three-game suspension for hitting Manny Machado (more on that later) and the brand new four-game suspension he earned from Washington after battering his teammate.

A true team player, Papelbon has agreed to withdraw his appeal for the Machado suspension and accepted his now week-long suspension like the consummate pro he is. He is self-policing his own renegade self-policing, which is a little confusing, but commendable. Now if everyone else could just stop being so stupid about this whole thing, we might be able to get on with our Monday.

It's a tricky thing because baseball is not like your job, as the players themselves never tire of saying. The players do police themselves, and that is what happened here. On the one hand, you have an extremely talented, extremely arrogant young player having an MVP season. On the other hand, you have an extremely arrogant veteran reliever who is well past his prime, and who just choked another player for all the world to see. Okay… so, as it turns out, it's not tricky at all in this case: Papelbon is all-the-way wrong and your personal feelings about Bryce Harper are irrelevant.

The I-played-the-game brigade can talk all they want about how young players need to be put in place, or how the locker room is "not like your office," but of course this is not even close to the self-policing baseball loves to talk about. Jonathan Papelbon was salty and looking for revenge, saw an opportunity and took it, and that's it. Harper called him out after he decided to hit Baltimore's Manny Machado after Machado had the gall to pimp a home run. Harper said the whole thing was "tired" and speculated that he'd probably get hit in retaliation.

That obviously bothered Papelbon—who, again, threw at a dude's head (twice, because he missed the first time) because that player had hit a home run and appeared to enjoy it too much. And so when Papelbon felt Harper fucked up, he was ready to pounce. Harper popped out to shallow left field and did not immediately run hard out of the box. He looked up in frustration, threw his bat down, and then took off for first. At no point was he ever in danger of getting thrown out, nor did he sacrifice a chance to advance a base should Jeff Francoeur have dropped the ball. Never mind that, though, look at Papelbon stalking Harper as he made his way back to the dugout.

He couldn't wait to get in Harper's face to tell him he should have run the ball out. He's not doing this for altruistic team-building purposes. He's not concerned that Harper's lack of hustle will lead to poor play. Harper made him look stupid after the Machado incident—well, helped him a long in his own campaign to look stupid—and Papelbon is pissed off about it. This isn't a grizzled pro teaching a young kid how to Play The Game The Right Way. This is a major league veteran administering bush league justice because his feelings are hurt.

It makes this whole self-policing debate irrelevant on its face, but former big league pitcher and current Fox Sports columnist C.J. Nitkowski polled, like, six current and former players who think that not only is it okay for Papelbon to attack a teammate, but it was downright necessary.

"I am totally OK with Papelbon gripping Bryce Harper by the throat and pushing him against a wall, I just wish he did it at another time," is the kind of first-ballot idiocy you will only find in baseball. Office, locker room, wherever it happens: I think we can all agree that one person should not do this to another person, regardless of the perceived character failings of the chokee. This is especially true when it is so obviously retributive, but it is true no matter what. Yet there are current players out there that think this is okay because they find Bryce Harper cocky and annoying.

Harper probably is all of those things, too, but it only upset Papelbon to the point of going full Undertaker because it made him feel personally small. Jonathan Papelbon putting his own ego so far ahead of the team that he attacked a teammate—the only position player on the team that has been worth a damn this season, and the best player in the league—is exactly the kind of selfish behavior that players are talking about when they invoke the idea of self-policing. It's exactly the kind of entitled behavior LaTroy Hawkins criticized with a dopey hashtag. And It is, most ironically, exactly the kind of behavior that rubs people the wrong way about Harper. The good thing for the Nationals is that they get the day off from self-policing this issue. The organization took care of it for them.

[MLB]