You wouldn't like Eddie Butler when he's angry
Greenbrier Christian Academy, in Virginia, was playing nearby Bishop Sullivan. Emotions were running high. Several pro scouts were in the stands to watch Greenbrier authentic nfl jerseys senior right-hander Eddie Butler. Instead of trying to impress those who had a say in his future, Butler wanted some revenge.
“This kid just kept running his mouth the whole time,” Butler recently recalled of the 2009 game. “He ran his mouth in the fall and ran his mouth all winter. He went to a rival school. So I hit him on purpose. We cleared benches. A couple guys got ejected.”
It wouldn’t be the first or last time emotion overcame Butler. Now a member of the Chicago Cubs bullpen, Butler admits he had -- or even has -- an “anger problem.” In fact, he’s still trying to overcome it -- or at least put it in its place.
“I did it this spring training,” Butler said. “I had a bad inning. Threw my glove against the bench then kicked it under the bench.”
The irony is Butler might be the last guy on the Cubs you would think has a short fuse. Usually there’s a smile on his face, but underneath it all, he has struggled to maintain control.
“He would get in trouble for doing stupid stuff,” Eddie’s dad, Tim Butler, said via a phone interview. “But he would give everything up just to go to baseball. We took everything else away from him. He lost his TV in his room. He would have to go to bed right after dinner and no friends. But he got to go to practice.”
Eddie summed it up: “I used to hold things in, hold things in, then explode.”
A day in middle school provided quite the scene.
“I got angry and yelled at a girl in the middle of class and got suspended,” Butler said. “That’s when my parents sat me down and said, ‘Look, you need to get this under control.’ It was either losing baseball or stop hanging out with friends and no TV and stuff. I chose baseball.”
It was a good choice, as Butler was eventually drafted in the first round by Colorado after attending Radford University. Before spring training in 2017, he was traded to the Cubs for James Farris, who has since retired.
Baseball should have been his release. Instead, it only fueled his anger, especially when things didn’t go his way. Fortunately, the thrown bats, kicked gloves and punched water coolers never resulted in real harm -- for himself or his teammates.
“You would see him do that stuff,wholesale nfl jerseys but I think it was just a maturing thing,” said teammate Tyler Chatwood, who played with Butler in the Rockies system. “He was pretty young, getting called up. He’s been able to mature.”
