Sean Tracey is back riding a bus in the minor leagues because he didn’t do it. Randy Johnson soon might be riding the bench for a few games because he did.

The moral behind the recent tales of two pitchers seems to be this: It’s far more painful to violate baseball’s unwritten rules than it is the ones on paper.

Throw at a batter, get a slap on the wrist. Don’t throw at one and you’re suddenly wondering what became of those luxury hotel rooms and that tasty clubhouse spread.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. Johnson is a superstar who can get away with just about anything because he still brings nasty stuff from over the top, while Tracey is an expendable rookie reliever with a grand total of 42â3 innings in the bigs.

About the only thing they have – or had – in common was that they were both pitchers in the American League and were both expected to dish out a little 90 mph retaliation on behalf of plunked teammates Wednesday night.

That’s because, in baseball, payback is usually a pitch.

It’s been that way since the early days of the game, and it’s still that way today. Which may not be such a bad thing when you consider the alternative is doing a Juan Marichal and going after the other player with your bat.

Despite the best efforts of major league baseball, the cycle is as relentless as the summer heat in St. Louis. Eject a pitcher, suspend a manager, fine a couple of players. Then sit back and watch it all happen again.

The unwritten rules still rule, and nowhere are they more clear than on the Chicago White Sox.

“You don’t want to intimidate my ballclub,” Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. “You can’t, because if something happens I don’t like, we’re going to take care of that. And we do a good job at it.”

Tracey didn’t do a good job of it, and it cost him his job, despite the protestations of the White Sox that he was headed to the minors anyway. Guillen yanked his young reliever after he failed to hit Hank Blalock, then made him cower in the dugout with his jersey pulled over his head as he screamed at him.

The New York Yankees’ Johnson, meanwhile, did what he was supposed to do by throwing at Cleveland’s Eduardo Perez – and was immediately ejected. Johnson was suspended five games, but has appealed.

Pitchers make the majors by being able to throw the ball over the plate. They’d better know how to throw at someone, too.

It may be dangerous, and often it’s just plain stupid. But it is the code of the game, and you’d better not break it. Throw at our guys, and we’ll throw at yours.

Throw at our best guys, and you’d better start ducking.

“The main thing is you have to protect your superstar players,” said Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe. “In Boston, we had a rule that if (David) Ortiz or Manny (Ramirez) got hit by a fastball, no matter if it was on purpose, we’d hit a guy the next inning.”

Guillen could have given Tracey a break because he wasn’t asking him to retaliate for a superstar. The White Sox victim in this case was A.J. Pierzynski, a decent enough catcher but also a guy universally disliked around the league and merely tolerated by his teammates.

Tracey has some time to contemplate all of that. He is in Moosic, Pa., this weekend, sitting in the visitors’ bullpen at Lackawanna County Stadium, pondering a lesson learned.

If he gets to the majors again, watch out: He may start throwing at the guy in the on-deck circle.