A viral video blowing up all over Twitter and many news sites shows two Venezuelan Winter League baseball teams in a huge brawl involving players and fans.
The reports say the brawl happened Sunday, but if the video seems eerily familiar, that’s because the event actually happened in 2018.
Here’s the Twitter post by Baseball Fight Club that apparently fooled the media. The account, which has more than 115,000 followers, does not represent the brawl as a recent event.
Checking in on winter league baseball pic.twitter.com/i08kYIrF7L
— Baseball Fight Club (@mlbfights) November 8, 2022
But somewhere along the way, the fight that happened in 2018 got picked up by a news website, which reported it happened Sunday. Everyone else followed that site’s lead. Among the sites that ran with the video as a current event: the New York Post, Barstool Sports, Outkick, The Big Lead, and Yardbarker, along with many lesser-known sites.
Here’s what the brawl looked like back in 2018:
La cosa se descontroló en el universitario entre los Leones y La Guaira, qué locurapic.twitter.com/A6DMLexEWR
— Óscar C. (@oscarcallest) December 20, 2018
Yahoo Sports reported at the time that the brawl broke out between La Guaira and Caracas.
Caracas right fielder Felix Perez is the player who breaks free from the restraints of several other teammates and rushes the field to kick the melee into high gear. As the mob moves toward the stands, former MLB catcher Hector Sanchez flattens Perez with a heavyweight-worthy punch.
Amazingly, only four players were ejected as a result of the fight.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s to remember the old X-Files catchphrase: “Trust no one.”
That may sound cynical, but things are getting even stranger in the media world these days. Elon Musk’s new Twitter verification policy has led to the potential for widespread misinformation regarding player announcements and more.
About Arthur Weinstein
Arthur spends his free time traveling around the U.S. to sporting events, state and national parks, and in search of great restaurants off the beaten path.