First of all, I want to apologize to all the women I offended with my "panty-waist" comment. They don't deserve a stain like Bud Selig on their gender. But when I weighed it against "Pansy-ass", I decided that it would look better in the sidebar.

Bud Selig suspended pitcher Randy Johnson for five games for throwing at a Cleveland batter in a game recently. Not for hitting him, mind you, but for throwing AT him, in obvious retaliation for Cleveland's pitcher hitting Yankees catcher Jorge Posada.

Non baseball fans may not like or understand this, but there is a certain code for pitchers in baseball. If you are the starting pitcher, you do not let the opposing pitchers get away with hitting any of your team. Especially your catchers. There usually is a retaliatory pitch.

Randy Johnson is more than capable of striking his target, a fact he has shown in the times he HAS hit batters with a pitch. The fact that he threw inside was simply part of the game, part of the way it has always been.

Randy Johnson was ejected from the game, and that is as it should be. But that is where his punishment should end. This stupid "no contact" rule that simpering weaklings like Selig seem to have brought to the game is ridiculous. What's next? Calling a shrink out to have the players sit out between innings and talk about their feelings towards each other?

I cannot imagine Bob Feller being suspended for a retaliatory pitch. Or Sandy Koufax. Or, more recently, Nolan Ryan. Johnson should not have been suspended for simply doing what good baseball players have always done.