Aug. 14, 1964 - Bo Belinsky of the Los Angeles Angels was suspended indefinitely by the club today after an early morning fracas in which he knocked out sportswriter Braven Dyer.
Belinsky, contending he was only defending himself and that Dyer came to his Washington hotel room and tried to attack him, said he was going to see his lawyer.
“Just what right do the Angels have to suspend me without pay?” he asked.
The controversial southpaw, who had been a headline grabber since he had pitched a no-hitter as a rookie, said he was leaving for Los Angeles immediately to see his lawyer, Paul Caruso.
“I knew it was bad when Dyer came to my room in the early morning hours after an argument over the phone about a story he had written in the Los Angeles Times,” Belinsky said.
“Here I was, a 27-year-old ballplayer with a 64-year-old man,” he said, “and the first thing that occurred to me was to push him away.”
Belinsky said when he opened the door, Dyer came at him, fists clenched, calling him “gutless.”
Dyer said: “I knocked on the door. We started talking, and that’s all I remember.”
“I pushed him with the heel of my hand, and he fell against the wall,” Belinsky said.
Dyer was knocked unconscious, required six stitches for a cut under his left ear, and had a black right eye.
Dyer, who covers the team for the Times, said he had questioned Belinsky in the hotel lobby about an A.P. story that the 27-year-old pitcher planned to quit baseball. Belinsky frequently has said he plans to quit baseball for something that pays more money.
Dyer said Belinsky told him he had been misquoted in the A.P. story and gave the writer a quote, which Dyer went to his room to telephone to his newspaper.
“I had already undressed and gone to bed when Belinsky called me,” Dyer said. “He said he had read the A.P. story and he hadn’t been misquoted. I told him it was too late to call my paper.”
Belinsky then complained about mistreatment by newspaper, and ended by saying: “You come down here, and I’ll stick your f*****g head under the shower.”
Dyer, once a star college football player, said: “A writer can’t let a player get away with a threat like that. I dressed and went down to his room.”
When he got there, Dyer said, “I knocked on the door. We started talking, and that’s all I remember.”
Dyer said he regained consciousness with manager Bill Rigney and the team trainer working over him.
“It looks like I’m going to be all right,” Dyer said, “except right now I’ve got a little double vision. There is no sign of concussion.”
Rigney would say only that Belinsky was suspended indefinitely for “socking sportswriter Braven Dyer.”
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