Most baseball fights are silly business, defined by chirping, jostling, relievers dashing through the outfield toward fisticuffs that they know will never happen. It’s almost always light, vaguely humorous entertainment.

This Yankees-Rays tension is now different: Due to the actions of Aroldis Chapman and Kevin Cash, the teams are now engaged in dangerous business that even hardened baseball men know is wrong.

Here’s why:

-- Yankees fans, please set aside your loyalty for a moment and take a clear-eyed look at why Chapman was almost certainly reckless and wrong on Tuesday night.

In the first inning, Masahiro Tanaka settled the latest bit of tension between the clubs by plunking Joey Wendle in the lower part of his body. This is how it’s supposed to be done, according to the oft-cited unwritten rules of baseball. The legs, the butt, anything but the head.

In the ninth, Chapman got the first two outs before throwing a fastball near Mike Brosseau’s head. Many Yankee fans online immediately noted the fact that hitting Brosseau would have put the tying run on base with a 5-3 lead, citing that as evidence that it couldn’t have been intentional.

That theory doesn’t stand up to a gut check we did of a few former players.

“Standard procedure is, get the first two outs then go get someone,” said one longtime MLB player. “Probably would have happened even in a one run game.”

The whole tying run on base thing simply doesn’t excuse Chapman. He threw at another player’s head, which in baseball is considered way over the line. There are no Bob Gibsons in baseball today, and the overwhelming consensus among players is that head-hunting is dangerous, even criminal business.

-- Unlike Chapman, Rays manager Kevin Cash didn’t come close to assaulting another person with a potentially deadly weapon. But he made two highly inappropriate comments -- one that could incite violence and lead to serious injury, and one that was a deeply personal dig at Aaron Boone and his coaches.

"It was mishandled by the Yankees, certainly the pitcher on the mound, it was mishandled by the umpires," Cash said.

"Chapman comes in, he throws three different balls up and in... we're talking about a 100 mph fast ball over a young man's head. It makes no sense. It's poor judgement, poor coaching, poor teaching what they're doing and what they're allowing to do."

Everything about the quote is spot on, until it takes a terrible turn after the word “judgment.” The lines about coaching and teaching point to Boone, a baseball lifer who knows what’s right and wrong, and his staff.

The Rays might also have been talking about famously excitable third-base coach Phil Nevin, who does tend to irritate opponents. But to imply that Nevin or anyone else is “teaching” pitchers to head hunt is a serious allegation. It also defies logic.

Cash stepped further out of line when he concluded with a thinly-veiled threat that cast his entire rant as hypocritical.

“I got a whole damn stable that throw 98 mph, period,” the Rays manager said.

That line hit the Yankees hard, as was evident in Boone and DJ LeMahieu’s reactions to it.

"That's a pretty scary comment," Boone said. "I don't think that's right at all, but I'm not gonna get into it right now."

“Sounds like they're gonna try to throw at us tomorrow,” LeMahieu added. “We'll be ready."

Major League Baseball probably won’t let that happen. Chris Young, the league’s new discipline czar, almost certainly agrees with our criticisms of both Chapman and Cash. And when the discipline comes down, remember that it’s a former pitcher issuing it. Young knows the unwritten rules better than any of us.

Baseball people understand that both head-hunting and the threat of it are simply not OK.

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