I'm absolutely baffled - astonished, appalled, astounded, enraged - by this sub's response to this event. Let me start by establishing a few things:
1) I'm a Yankee fan, but the top rated comment here - and, in fact, many of the top-rated comments on this thread - are from Yankee fans who are trashing the ejection of Harper and Williams. So don't pin what I'm about to say on the fact that I root for the pinstripes.
2) I am mainly a Reddit lurker who has accrued a paltry 238 comment karma over roughly 3 years of lackluster participation in the Reddit and r/Baseball community. I have gone for several multi-month spells without even looking at Reddit, and couldn't care less about downvotes.
Anyone defending Harper and/or Williams has a malfunctioning brain stem and deserves to be prohibited by the state from viewing any more baseball games for the remainder of their pathetic, loathsome existence.
Bryce Harper put his toe into the batter's box to DELIBERATELY be a smartass (as if he needed to provide more evidence that he is a punk, anyway). YOU DO NOT ARGUE BALLS AND STRIKES. If you do choose to argue balls and strikes, you argue those calls AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE AT BAT, not after ONE PITCH. And if you have the gall to argue balls and strikes, you better have the track record to back it up - and three good seasons, two of which were by no definition full seasons, do not constitute the kind of track record a ballplayer needs to have to, again, ARGUE BALLS AND STRIKES AFTER ONE PITCH.
It was a ball; I'm no purist; I'm replay guy. But this is INCREDIBLY basic stuff: a 22 year-old in his fourth season, no matter how good his last two weeks have been (and jesus almighty have they been insane!), has absolutely no right to start VERBALLY ASSAULTING an umpire after ONE PITCH, and the fact that his manager started chirping first has nothing to do with his reaction; take responsibility for yourself as a player.
Hit me with the downvotes - "he's an angry Yankee fan," "they still lost even though Harper left in the third," "if it was a Yankee he'd take the opposite position," "the umps have sucked this entire series," "he's jealous of Harper's talent" - no, I am a lifelong baseball fan who, unlike most people here, saw a clear display of absolutely unjustified arrogance and rejoiced that this punk jackass got thrown out for breaking one of the most fundamental rules of hitting (you don't argue balls and strikes MID-AT-BAT) in his fourth season in the big leagues. Baseball history is littered with guys who started off well and ended as a footnote; here's to hoping this self-absorbed clown joins their ranks as soon as possible.