Over the past few years I’ve gotten back into Major League Baseball. I grew up loving baseball — playing it, listening to it on the radio and watching it on TV. But then came the ’90s with strikes and steroids and I lost interest. Still, summers were just not the same without baseball on the radio.

Fast forward to last summer when I found myself with not just one but two small kids at home. Mom works nights and some weekends so I often find myself spending lots of time alone with the grommits. We have a large HD television and watching sports on it is nothing short of amazing. You can see the blades of grass part when a ground ball rolls through the outfield. You can pick up the laces on the ball as a pitch makes its way to the plate. It’s breathtaking.

I have a long-held attachment to the Cincinnati Reds. I skipped studying for an important Organic Chemistry exam to go to a game in the 1976 World Series. I was in Riverfront Stadium one summer night in 1978 when Tom Seaver threw his only career no-hitter. I skipped studying for another exam, this time in grad school, to go to a game in the 1990 World Series.

The first few years I lived in Idaho I could stream Reds broadcasts over the Internet. But just around the time that professional baseball was imploding in the mid ’90s almost everything became subscription-based. All the more reason to bid baseball good riddance. But now that players have returned to normal sized bodies, are not hitting 40 home runs by the All Star break and can execute a sacrifice bunt, I’m back.

So after returning home from an evening motorcycle ride this week I walked in the house and turned on the TV for the last inning or so of the Reds game. Instead I got a fight. Not one of those namby pamby pretend baseball fights either. Nope – this was a genuine brouhaha. From the moxie standpoint it was the best sports fight I’ve ever seen.

Now before I “disappoint” anyone this week let me state for the record that I’m not for getting into fights. It’s no bueno settling your issues with your fists unless you are a professional fighter. Nonetheless sports is often as much about passion as it is skill. In the heat of the moment good judgment often gets tossed aside.

The Reds and Pirates are franchises that have never liked each other. Way back in 1974, Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis started a game by attempting to hit the first five Reds batters. Ellis hit Pete Rose (after throwing one over his head), then Joe Morgan and Dan Driessen. Ellis did his best to drill Tony Perez, including two pitches behind his head, but Perez somehow managed to draw a walk. Ellis was finally pulled from the game after attempting to hit Johnny Bench in the head not once, but twice.

Even for an era where brush-back and “message” pitches were more common than they are now this was egregious behavior. Especially throwing above or behind a batter head since their natural inclination is to move into, rather than away from, those pitches.

Now fast forward to earlier this season - April 7 to be exact. Reds second baseman Derek Dietrich hit a thunderous two-run shot off Pirates pitcher Chris Archer that traveled about 500 feet - out of the Pirates ballpark and into the Allegheny River. The Pirates took umbrage to Dietrich taking his time watching the ball leave the stadium before rounding the bases. During Dietrich’s next at bat Archer threw behind him. This led to a benches-clearing brawl.

Now I don’t know where you come down on the whole excessive celebration thing, but for me I like to think that in this circumstance I’d be more upset with myself for throwing a pitch so lousy that it could be hit into another area code than with the other guy for just taking the time to see if the ball reached escape velocity.

Undeterred, Dietrich has gotten revenge all season by wearing out Pirate pitching. Every time he gets thrown at by a Pirates pitcher he hits another home run in a following at bat. One of his victims early on was Keone Kela. Keone evidently has a long memory.

So on July 30, in the seventh inning of a game against the Reds in Cincinnati, with two out and nobody on, Kela threw a 98 mph fastball up an in to Dietrich. This was the beginning of the most entertaining three innings in baseball I’ve seen in a while.

There was lots of jawing back and forth between the two benches that evident even on TV. Cincinnati manager David Bell was ejected for arguing a strike call on Reds outfielder Yasiel Puig. One of the Pirates players got plunked in the bum-bum by a Reds reliever who actually spent most of his career with the Pirates. I think that he was trying to send a message to his former teammates in the most gentle way possible.

Then in the ninth inning, Reds reliever Amir Garrett, all 6’5” and 225 lbs of him, decided that he was fed up with the noise from the third base side of the infield and charged off the mound into the Pirates dugout. Now that’s a sports move right there. If you are going to be a bear, be a Grizzly.

As one might expect both benches emptied. Yasiel Puig, who unbeknownst to nearly everyone had been traded to the Cleveland Indians a few minutes earlier, got ejected. David Bell, who’d already been ejected, came out of the clubhouse and joined the fray. All in all five were ejected as a result of the fight joining three others who’d been ejected in earlier innings.

So why am I writing about this? Well how often does hitting a ball out of a ballpark into a river lead to a series of futile retaliatory beanings which leads to a pitcher charging the other team’s dugout months later? And in the end no one got seriously hurt.

Now that’s entertainment.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, consultant and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time happily raising three children, llama farming and riding mountain bikes and motorcycles.