With one look and a gesture of the hands, an understanding was reached between an Orioles and Yankees reliever in the mad dash out of the bullpens at Camden Yards and onto the field. They were Bryan Baker and Luke Weaver, the last two out of their respective bullpen areas in April, and they met on the stairs — both pausing for the other, eye contact made, wondering how this might go.

Weaver motioned with his hands as if to say, “After you.” Baker nodded, as if to say, “Why, thank you, good sir.”

And then they hustled, side by side, to join in a fracas that barely involved more than a few shoves, a few F-bombs. It was over before Weaver and Baker and the rest of the Yankees and Orioles relievers arrived from center field to the infield dirt. It was much ado about nothing, and yet the sequence captured a delicate dance all the same.

At Camden Yards, the home and away bullpens are stacked one after the other in straightaway center field. The relievers from either team use the same staircase to reach the field. They pass over the same cobblestone to reach the same gate, and they run along the same path toward the mound.

“When you realize what the purpose of you going out there is, along with that politeness between opposing teams, it’s funny,” Baker said.

That creates what all involved acknowledge as a comical routine once it’s clear no one was hurt — the benches clear, tempers flare and the relievers come sprinting in, well-intentioned yet always late. Then they trudge back, wondering why they did it in the first place.

On April 30, when Baker and Weaver met on those stairs, it was a perfect example of the dichotomy felt in those moments. Heston Kjerstad, the Orioles outfielder, took exception to Yankees second baseman Pablo Reyes landing on him after leaping for a throw to second base. A few words, a quick shove, and here it goes — everyone rushing to the field.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” said left-hander Keegan Akin. “I just hear, ‘Let’s go!’ I look up, everybody’s running. All right, here we go.”

That is often the case for relievers. They may be using the bathroom, warming up to pitch or in the midst of a conversation. Then bullpen catcher Ben Carhart — it’s usually him who notices first — yells the rallying cry for a charge.

“By the time we get there, we’re asking, ‘What happened?’” said right-hander Yennier Cano, who was recently optioned to Triple-A Norfolk, through team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “And by the time we get there, it’s over.”

They’ll joke with the opposing relievers on the walk back, winded from their unexpected sprint, and they’ll wonder why any of this was necessary. There is no other choice, though.

“No one really tries to fight, but you just have to protect your team,” said right-hander Seranthony Domínguez.

So off they run.

The routine is especially funny to watch unfold at Camden Yards because of the stacked bullpens. At many other parks around the majors, relievers have an easier time making a break for the field. The bullpens may be on opposite sides of the outfield, for instance, so there is no jostling for position with opposing pitchers.

But since Camden Yards opened in 1992, relief pitchers have laughed about the quirky nature of bench-clearing incidents in Baltimore. A few parks built since then have a similar bullpen setup, such as Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Cleveland’s Progressive Field.

Most of the disputes don’t amount to much of anything, just as the two brawls — for lack of a better word — involving the Orioles this season featured nothing but jawing.

“By the time we’re out there, nothing’s happening,” said Richard Bleier, a left-handed reliever for the Orioles between 2017 and 2020. “Nothing ever happens. This isn’t the ’90s where it was like, haymakers are getting thrown around. I don’t think I ever saw a single push in my eight years in the big leagues, or anything. It’s just like, ‘You’re dumb.’ ‘No, you’re dumb.’ ‘You’re wrong.’ ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Kid stuff.”

Every once in a while, though, the situation boils over. Just ask those who were on the field when Mike Mussina plunked Bill Haselman in 1993.

The big one

Over the years, it has crossed the minds of almost every reliever who has spent time in the Camden Yards bullpens that for the sake of efficiency, they ought to not bother running toward the infield when a brawl breaks out.

Just keep the door locked. Rather than running all together, why not just duke it out on the bullpen steps, or in the sod farm beneath the batter’s eye in center field?

Those are all questions that Bleier posed during a phone call last week.

“Do we let them go first?” Bleier said. “Or we kind of all go out at the same time? When do we start fighting? When we get on the field? Should we just turn around and fight the relievers right there? If we’re all going to fight, just fight right there. Why run on the field?”

Gregg Olson, a right-handed reliever for the Orioles almost three decades before Bleier’s tenure, had those same thoughts.

“You think about it, you’re running in, you’re really just opening the gate for the other bullpen,” Olson said. “It was discussed, just keeping the gate shut and keeping them in here. But then it’s like, what are we really going to do if we do that? We’re not going to come to blows. I have no problem with those guys.”

Why run out at all?

Olson discovered why on June 6, 1993, when the Seattle Mariners visited the Orioles. Camden Yards was only one season old at that point. Mussina, a Hall of Famer, always seemed to be in the middle of it.

This one was “legendary,” Olson said.

Mussina plunked Haselman, the Mariners catcher, on the shoulder. Haselman dropped his bat, flung his helmet and charged toward Mussina. They grappled and tumbled over, the benches cleared, and the relievers began the journey from center field to the mound — down the stairs, across the cobblestone and through the same door generations of relievers have traversed.

Chaos, immediately.

By the time Olson arrived, there was a lull in the action. The immediate scuffle between Mussina and Haselman led to a dogpile, but the most heated parties were separated and the pushing and shoving seemed to come to an end. A minute later, though, Olson saw it all kick off again.

That’s when he saw Orioles third baseman Leo Gómez stuck beneath a Mariners player on the ground. “It wasn’t going good, so I go diving and take the Seattle guy out,” Olson recalled. It got crazier from there.

A Mariners player “squares on me, then Randy Johnson carries me into the dugout,” Olson said. That would be the 6-foot-10 Hall of Fame pitcher nicknamed the Big Unit. Olson is not small. He was listed at 6-foot-4 during his playing days. But Johnson picked him up and carried him off as if he was a kid.

“I look at Randy, I go, ‘Dude, I was just stopping a fight. I’m doing the same thing you’re doing. I’m pulling guys off of piles,’” Olson remembered. “And he goes, ‘Oly, just stay in the dugout.’ I’m like, ‘I’m doing the best I can.’ As soon as he leaves, I go sprinting back out and start pulling guys out of the bottom of the pile, and then I end up on the bottom of the pile.”

There is no worse place to be.

“You really try to keep your fingers from getting stepped on, breaking something,” Olson said. “You’re on the bottom of eight, 10, 15 grown men.”

Right next to Olson lay Mariners pitcher Chris Bosio, who broke his collarbone at the bottom of that pile.

“You get your hands clenched and you’re just laying on the bottom, hoping somebody peels you out,” Olson said. “It’s no good.”

Seven players involved in the brawl were ejected from the game and later suspended.

That was an extreme example; typically, brawls are broken up before any real damage is done. Olson often found himself a dance partner, as he described it, on the outside of the real melee. In those instances, they would hold onto each other and try to not get drawn into anything too serious.

Bleier was never in the middle of a scuffle. He wasn’t one to throw at another player, and more often than not, he reluctantly made his way out of the bullpen. “I hate my jog,” Bleier said, and he never liked how all eyes turned toward him and others when the time came to empty the bullpens. “At least you’re in a group,” he added.

But there was one occasion in New York when he wondered if he might be in for the mismatch of the century. On July 30, 2021, Bleier — then playing for the Miami Marlins — faced Aaron Judge. Bleier began his career in New York, and he spent time before the game chatting up Judge, his old teammate.

The pitch got away from Bleier, however, and it struck Judge on the shin.

That’s when the 6-foot-7 slugger took steps toward Bleier,

“I’m like, ‘Dude, we frickin’ shower together. Why would I hit you? I talked to you before the game,’” Bleier remembers calling over in an attempt to cool heads — and not face off with a much larger human. “He’s like, ‘Come on.’ I’m like, ‘Come on, man, go to first base. I’ll talk to you after the game about this.’”

Not everyone is as fortunate to escape unscathed.

The dangers

Joel Polanco never had time to take off his catchers gear.

The bullpen catcher, affectionately known as “Yogi,” led the charge from the bullpen last month when benches cleared at Camden Yards against the Chicago White Sox. Knee pads still strapped on, Polanco hustled toward the infield as the dust-up began.

There wasn’t much dust, however. During a rundown between first and second base, Orioles infielder Coby Mayo appeared to attempt to draw an interference call. He collided lightly with White Sox infielder Lenyn Sosa, and Sosa had words for Mayo. Mayo pushed Sosa, and then the benches cleared and the routine started all over again.

There’s a lot to navigate as a reliever. One time, former Orioles right-hander Dillon Tate figured he’d save time by avoiding congestion on the stairs and at the door. He jumped over the wall, Akin said. Tate “didn’t realize how far it was,” and the landing wasn’t pleasant.

“It’s always a mess because of the cobblestone,” Akin said. “It’s always risky. You’ve heard a lot of cleats go sliding.”

Once down the stairs and through the cobblestone and out the door, the full sprint takes over. So there was Polanco, pads on, rushing in. His walk back was painful — he pulled a muscle in his leg.

“He spends a lot of time squatted out there,” Cano said. “So, at the time he had to hit the sprint, he pulled a muscle back there.”

Added Baker: “I think they were both [Polanco and Carhart] sore or banged up after the White Sox one. We were like, we’re gonna need a backup bullpen catcher to catch the rest of the game.”

If that is the extent of the injury report following a bench-clearing incident, it’s a good day. There have been other cases where players fare much worse, such as Bosio’s broken collarbone. In 2017, for instance, a brawl between San Francisco Giants reliever Hunter Strickland and Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper left Michael Morse with a concussion that ended Morse’s career.

But there are few brawls now that reach the boiling point of punches and scary collisions. Bleier thinks “it’s not as serious because everyone knows everybody now.”

“It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate those Yankees,’” Bleier said. “I played with six of them last year, or whatever. I was on the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Orioles, so I played with all these guys. … Teams are not as loyal to players, so players are kind of more loyal to each other, I guess.”

That’s probably a positive in the long run.

After Akin and the rest of the Yankees and Orioles relievers ran to the infield nearly three months ago, he and Mark Leiter Jr. struck up a conversation. They were winded. They realized there wasn’t much reason to run out of the bullpens at all.

“I said, ‘That’s a long run for a big boy like you,’” Akin told Leiter. “He said, ‘Yeah, next time, let’s just grab each other’s shirts and stay in the bullpen.’”

Akin agreed in the moment, enjoying the chance to jest. But in reality, the relievers will always run out — “It’s just instinct,” Cano said — and look back and wonder why they did what they did yet again.

“Honestly,” Bleier said, “the whole thing is hilarious.”