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Someday, an enterprising baseball writer will break new ground with the book, Great Moments in Intentional Walk History. It will be a relatively short work, in the mode of Yordano Venturas Guide to Baseball Etiquette or Great Icelandic Baseball Heroes.People who enjoy their baseball at a quicker pace regard the busywork entailed in an intentional walk as perhaps the most worthless interlude in the game. To them, its duller than a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the brief time that the pitcher and catcher spend playing catch isnt long enough to accommodate a restroom break or concession stand visit. So whats the point in continuing it?That thinking helps explain why Major League Baseball might be on the verge of eliminating the routine. As ESPN.coms Jayson Stark recently reported, MLBs competition committee has discussed a package of changes to reduce dead time and help speed the pace of play. One proposed change calls for a batter to take first base on an intentional walk without the formality of the pitcher having to throw four wide.Frankly, Im in favor of the auto walk, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto said in an email. Im a baseball history junkie and as a result tend to lean toward tradition. That said, as an industry we really do need to find subtle ways to create a quicker pace if we intend to remain relevant with the next generation of fans.Long-time MLB manager Jim Leyland, now a special assistant with the Detroit Tigers, agrees.Im all for it, Leyland said. Put up four [fingers] and tell the guy to go to first. Every blue moon one gets by the catcher, but Id like to see us put this through. Keep the pace of the game going. To me, its a no-brainer.Some basic math helps frame the debate. The average intentional walk takes 45 seconds to a minute to complete. MLB teams issue 900 to 1,000 intentional walks a season, which means 16 to 17 hours are invested in batteries playing catch. The average MLB season includes about 7,300 hours of game time, so MLB would shorten the season by about 0.2 percent with a change in the rules.Are baseballs decision-makers so intent on squeezing precious minutes and seconds that they make quirkiness obsolete?Theater of the absurdForget about cycles and no-hitters -- celebrated achievements that have occurred 250-300 times each since the start of the modern era in 1900. During that same 116-year span, the intentional walk-turned-hit is only slightly more commonplace than Randy Johnson vaporizing a bird with a pitch, or Adam Wainwright almost hitting a bird with a pitch.?I dont want to lose those moments where you can say, Ive never seen that before, said Phillies broadcaster and former big league pitcher Larry Andersen. If you eliminate the intentional walk, theres a chance youll lose one of those Ive-never-seen-this-before episodes. Those are part of what makes baseball great. Granted, theyre few and far between. But they keep the game a little more entertaining.In a 2011 Society for American Baseball Research article, historian Bill Deane recounted 11 instances in which a hitter swung at a pitch during an intentional walk and put the ball in play. Ty Cobb, Willie Mays and Pete Rose are among the members of this exclusive club.?Like squirrels cavorting on the field, botched IBBs appear every now and then to add a touch of intrigue or hilarity to the regularly scheduled proceedings.? In Game 3 of the 1972 World Series, with the count full on Johnny Bench, Oakland manager Dick Williams visited the mound and made a show of telling reliever Rollie Fingers to go ahead with the intentional walk. Bench, lulled into a false sense of security, stood motionless as As catcher Gene Tenace jumped back behind home plate and caught a fastball on the outer edge for strike three. Years later, Bench told Fingers the incident was the most embarrassing moment of his life.? Catcher Tony Pena, a veteran of 18 big-league seasons, was adept at faking out hitters by stepping outside the box, then hopping back into his crouch and catching strike three before the unsuspecting hitter knew what hit him. San Francisco Giants catcher Brian Johnson was victimized by the ruse during the 1997 season with Houston reliever John Hudek on the mound.?What a dummy I was, Johnson, now a scout with the Giants, said in a text message. Oh well. I guess I fell for the banana in the tailpipe. Johnson took the lapse less personally when informed that Pena also victimized Chili Davis and John Olerud with the ploy.?Perfect! he said. I feel better already.? Terry Francona achieved a distinction as one of the few (if not the only) players to be ejected from a game while receiving an intentional pass.Francona was playing for the Brewers in 1989 when he hit a line drive that Angels outfielder Dante Bichette clearly trapped, but umpire Ken Kaiser mistakenly ruled the play a catch.The atmosphere was still tense several weeks later when Kaiser was working home plate during a Milwaukee-Baltimore game. As pitcher Bob Milacki issued an intentional walk to Francona, Kaiser reportedly cracked, Can you believe theyre intentionally walking you?Replied Francona: If you werent so fat and hustled, you wouldnt have blown that call.Needless to say, Francona never got a chance to take first base.? Miguel Cabrera has made 10 All-Star teams and won two MVP awards, but the most novel sequence in his Hall of Fame-worthy career will never merit a mention on his plaque in Cooperstown.Cabrera was playing for the Marlins in 2006 when he reached out on a careless intentional walk offering from Baltimores Todd Williams and slapped it to center field for a run-scoring single.Upstairs in the booth, Orioles broadcaster Jim Palmer sputtered in exasperation and called it the type of play that happens in Little League.?? In 2004, Barry Bonds drew an astounding 120 intentional walks. The Giants responded by selling a rubber chicken named Walker in the team gift shop, and frustrated fans stood and twirled the chickens whenever opponents refused to challenge Bonds.This is another long-held baseball tradition: Regardless of the circumstances, if a home player is being walked, the home crowd responds with a torrent of boos.I guess its a sign of cowardice, Chicago Cubs broadcaster Jim Deshaies said. Youre not challenging our guy and giving him a chance to perform. Theres kind of a coliseum mindset. Youre half-waiting for them to drag the pitcher off and throw him to the lions because he intentionally walked a guy.For some, a four-pitch nightmareA 2-minute, 47-second YouTube compilation features assorted intentional walk disasters. John Axford, Lance McCullers Jr., Chris Withrow, Steve Cishek and Kevin Jepsen are among the pitchers who had to stew in their embarrassment after a failure to execute the most rudimentary task.?During the second half of Larry Andersens career, this was his reality.Andersen, remembered by many as the guy who was traded for Jeff Bagwell in 1990, made 699 appearances in a productive 17-year career. But as his time in the majors wound down, Andersen suffered from a bad case of the yips when throwing to first base and issuing intentional walks.In hindsight, Andersen says he thinks his problems began with a seemingly innocuous throw when he was pitching for Houston in 1986. In an attempt to pick off Pittsburghs Johnny Ray at first base, Andersen made a wild toss and nearly drilled Pirates first base coach (and his good friend) Tommy Sandt.Doubts began to creep into Andersens mind, and intentional walks elicited a sense of dread. Late in his career, Andersen threw about 90 percent sliders, and he felt off-kilter lobbing the ball home.I dont know of anybody else who threw breaking balls on intentional walks, but I would have been better off if I had done that, he said.Andersen hit rock bottom in a game with a young Craig Biggio behind the plate. As Andersen recalls, he threw the ball to home plate with a slow-pitch softball arc, and Biggio lost it in the lights and was tagged with a passed ball.My catchers had to be in full-on goalie mode, Andersen said. There was no telling where the ball was gonna go.Decades later, Andersen has conceived what he considers a fair compromise in the intentional walk debate.You know how they have a no-fly list for people who cant fly? Andersen said. They should have a no-free pass list for pitchers who cant throw intentional walks. Anybody whos done it five times with no problems, they dont have to make the throws. For somebody like me, they have to force them to do it.Sadistic? Perhaps. But Andersen falls squarely in the misery loves company camp in this debate.Ive gotta be honest -- I dont mind seeing other guys struggle with the same thing, he said. It makes me feel a little bit better about myself. Air Max Plus Nere Scontate . 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When the tough junior lightweight fight was over and Juan Manuel Lopez had knocked out fellow former world titleholder Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. in the 11th round of their bitter grudge match, they showed each other mutual respect and embraced multiple times.But what a wild time it was getting to that point Saturday night at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico.The Puerto Rican rivals, whose animosity had been building for years, went at each other relentlessly before the fight in a build-up that was as nasty as there could have been. Vazquez went so far as to say a few days before the fight that Lopez repulses him, and then they nearly came to blows at the final news conference, which prompted Black Tiger Promotions officials to beef up security at Fridays weigh-in.But on fight night, they let it all hang out in an exciting battle that ended in wild fashion, with Lopez, moments after scoring the knockout, exchanging punches with one of Vazquezs cornermen as the ring filled and fans began throwing objects, soda and beer at ringside.It took a few minutes to restore order, at which point Lopez and Vazquez stood with their arms around each other in the ring, having earned each others respect after a grueling fight, which was contracted at 129 pounds, one below the junior lightweight limit as an accommodation to the smaller Vazquez.Lopez (35-5, 32 KOs), 33, a powerful southpaw who won world titles at junior featherweight and featherweight and was at one time widely considered one of the 10 best fighters in the world pound-for-pound, was coming off a 25-month retirement and had been badly knocked out inside four rounds in three of his previous four fights.Lopez did not look good early. Through most of the first half of the fight, Lopez appeared to lack the usual snap on his punches, looked a bit soft and was being soundly outboxed by the quicker Vazquez (24-7-1, 19 KOs), 32, a former junior featherweight titleholder who repeatedly landed lead left hands.Slowly but surely, however, Lopez began to find his target. He nailed Vazquez with a right hook that shook him in the fifth round. As the rounds wore on, Vazquez was having trouble with his left eye, which he continually blinked for the rest of the fight. By the eighth round, it had turnedd into an all-out brawl, exactly the kind of fight that typically does not bode well for Vazquez.dddddddddddd At the end of the ninth round, they continued to trade punches with each other after the bell as the crowd went wild.Finally, in the 11th round, Lopez backed a fading Vazquez close to the ropes and fired a combination that rocked him and sent him falling into the ropes. Vazquez grabbed onto the top rope to try to keep from going down but landed on his rear end. Rather than give Vazquez a chance to collect himself and begin counting for the knockdown, referee Ramon Pena immediately called off the fight at 2 minutes, 29 seconds.Lopez began to celebrate, and then moved aggressively toward one of Vazquezs cornermen, who had entered the ring. They exchanged multiple punches in a wild scene and the ring immediately filled with people, and a riot nearly broke out in the ring and at ringside before order was restored.At time of stoppage, Lopez was ahead 96-94 on two of the judges scorecards, and the third judge had it 95-95.Vazquez, the son of former three-division world titleholder Wilfredo Vazquez Sr., his trainer, has lost three fights in a row and four of his past five, but he accomplished more in his career than many thought he ever would. He began boxing in 2006 without any amateur background, won a vacant 122-pound world title in 2010 and made two successful defenses. After the loss to Lopez, however, Vazquez said in the ring that this was his last fight.Lopez, out of retirement, said he planned to fight again and wanted any big name willing to face him. He mentioned former three-division titleholder Abner Mares, who is scheduled for a Dec. 10 fight against featherweight titleholder Jesus Cuellar. In September 2014, Cuellar obliterated Lopez in the second round of an interim title fight in the loss that sent him into retirement.Lopez also mentioned a desire to face Mexican rival Orlando Salido again. Salido traveled to Puerto Rico in 2011 and knocked Lopez out in the