Maybe it’s because they’re overpaid crybabies who sit out for months at a time, or maybe it’s because they play the least intense and least physically demanding of all major American sports, but for whatever reason, baseball players sure do enjoy a good fight.

In the past few years, any high and inside fastball has become a reason to either retaliate in kind or simply charge the mound like a child throwing a tantrum.

Most recently, Mets catcher Mike Piazza went after Dodgers pitcher Guillermo Mota, and anyone watching the game saw the rage in Piazza’s eyes.

After a pitch hit Piazza in the back, he felt compelled to charge the mound while Mota ran into the dugout and was escorted home after the game as protection from the still steaming Piazza.

In essence, fans are left with one guy getting beaned in a literally meaningless game and taking the offense as a personal attack, while a bench-clearing melee ensued and umpires were left standing helplessly by the wayside. Even when a hit batsman doesn’t result in petty violence, a clear culture of violence and retaliation has sprung from baseball where it has become perfectly acceptable to intentionally go after players months after an incident.

So Piazza and any others involved in fighting will be fined and suspended. But how effective are either of these measures when a player chooses the games he misses and is ultimately able to deduct fines levied as a business expense? There is a reason fights are rarely seen at the college or minor league levels, and it is primarily because college players are quite possibly more mature than the average Major League Baseball player and such behavior is simply not tolerated at the college or minor league levels.

If you want to punish baseball players for charging the mound or degenerating a game into a bench-clearing brawl, forget fining the player a pittance he can simply earn back when tax season comes. Instead, give umpires the power to forfeit games when someone decides to charge the mound rather than take the base. Translation: You charge the mound, you lose the game.

But for some teams perennially out of contention, a loss has no effect on a season or team morale. In addition to a loss in the standings, why not take a team’s portion of the money from the gate as well? While charging an individual player a few thousand dollars for a childish indiscretion most surely won’t bring change, taking away six figures from a team will. Add to this television revenues lost for an

unfinished, forfeited game, and teams will also be forced to deal with pressure from networks losing millions because of a hothead with a bat and an ax to grind.

Fighting has no place in professional baseball and needn’t be tolerated. A culture of revenge and retaliation may have sprung from a few well-placed inside pitches, but when standard measures can’t quell an insurrection, it may be time to hit teams, not players, where it counts: the pocketbook.