Remembering Jason LaRue who's career ended abruptly after an in game fight
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00:00Players who ended other players' careers On August 10th, 2010, a brawl between two division
00:05rivals would end the career of journeyman catcher Jason LaRue. In the bottom of the first in a 1-0
00:09ball game, Brandon Phillips stepped to the plate to face Jaime Garcia when he tapped Cardinals
00:14catcher Yaddy Melina's shin pad with his bat, which Melina took offense to. You see, one night
00:19earlier, Brandon Phillips had let his thoughts known about the division rival, calling them all
00:24little b****** and saying plainly that he, quote, hates the Cardinals. So by tapping Melina's shin pads,
00:30Phillips was poking the bear, and the Cardinals did not like that. Their confrontation led to the
00:34bench's clearing, where managers Dusty Baker and Tony LaRusso, who already didn't like each other due
00:39to a decades-long beef, started chirping at each other. Everything then escalated when former Cardinal
00:44Scott Rowland got tied up with Chris Carpenter, causing the fight to bleed into the backstop.
00:49In the scuffle, Johnny Cueto, that day's starter for Cincinnati, gets pinned against the wall and
00:54starts kicking, hitting Carpenter and Cardinals catcher Jason LaRue with his spikes. LaRue, who
01:00had spent six seasons as a starting catcher in Cincinnati, was in year three of his tenure as
01:04Yaddy Melina's backup. The 36-year-old was primarily known for his defense, hitting 96 career home runs
01:10with a career OPS of 7-12. But LaRue also suffered from serious concussions, accruing nearly 20 of them
01:16dating back to his days of playing high school football. So when Johnny Cueto kicked him in the
01:20head during that brawl, LaRue would suffer one more concussion that would prove to be career-ending.
01:25On August 19th, LaRue would be put on the 60-day DL, ending his season, and after suffering severe
01:30post-concussion symptoms, announced his retirement just under a month later. While it was likely that
01:35that season would have gone down LaRue's last regardless, it's a shame that the 12-year vet couldn't
01:40go out on his own terms.