After massive brawl, it's time for Yordano Ventura and the Royals to lose the attitude

Save for the undeniable entertainment value, there was only one positive that emerged from Thursday night's 50-man pileup known as the seventh inning of the Royals-White Sox game in Chicago.

Yordano Ventura may finally understand the weight of his actions, even as his teammates continue embracing an us-against-the-world mentality that with every passing incident seems more a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After the most violent three-week start to a season for any franchise (and if someone has a metric to disprove this, let's hear it), Ventura dropped the Tough Guy veneer for just a second and displayed something resembling culpability.

It only came a few incidents too late.

"He recognizes that some of his actions are putting him in a less than favorable light, as well as the team, which is very important to him," Ventura said afterward, via teammate Jeremy Guthrie, who translated. "So he wants to work on it, and be better. It's something he needs to work on."

"I think he feels like he's got big shoes to fill," says manager Ned Yost. "But it's his arm that does the talking. Or, needs to do the talking."

Actually, it's the Royals that should've done the talking, many weeks ago.

Sure, it's easy to blame Ventura for Thursday's melee, which has been brewing from the first innings of this season until Thursday's seventh inning in Chicago, when Ventura flicked a match into this river of kerosene.He fielded Adam Eaton's comebacker, bounded off the mound, shook his head at Eaton and dropped an expletive that did not require the translation services of the Stanford-educated Guthrie.

And it was on, a wall-to-wall scrum that featured enough micro-battles to ensure a bevy of suspensions will be handed down.

White Sox starter Jeff Samardzija, whose opening-day plunking of Lorenzo Cain began the hostilities, went looking for Cain, found him – and instead trucked Royals third base coach Mike Jirschele.

Royals starter Edinson Volquez fired a wild haymaker that found only air, but will be replayed like the Zapruder Film in Major League Baseball's Park Avenue offices this afternoon.

Yost ended up at the bottom of about 20 players, and Cain emerged with his jersey tucked over his head.

It's an imperfect science projecting how MLB will mete out discipline, but figure on this much:

Ventura, based on his past record (more on that soon) could go down for at least 10 games, or two starts.

Volquez may well join him, given that he was ejected and his actions were captured so crystal clear.

The White Sox will be dinged as well. Samardzija, given he wasn't even in the game, will surely be suspended for at least a start. Thursday's starter, Chris Sale, was ejected after he ended up in the sea of humanity, and he didn't calm matters by hitting Mike Moustakas earlier and dusting Cain off the plate.

Afterward, the Royals claimed Samardzija has been chirping at them since last October's AL wild-card game, when he was a member of the A's. And that Eaton provoked Ventura before Ventura's singular but well-timed f-bomb supplanted Bryan Price as the week's most significant expletive.

Well, too bad, boys.

You're about to lose two of your starting pitchers, you imperiled the health of your No. 3 hitter and center fielder, and you've established yourselves as Public Enemy No. 1 among opponents, and perched yourself atop the watch list of umpires and MLB's discipline czars.

Is all that really worth the feeling of "having each others' backs" that you've carefully constructed since Game 1?

The Royals' 2014 AL pennant had only been up a couple hours on Opening Day when they were vaulting over the dugout railing after Samardzija hit Cain, and the two exchanged glances.

"It was just looking out for each other,'' Moustakas said then. "Everybody felt the same way. It didn't look right.''

OK. Fair enough.

They were on the field again a few days later when Ventura somehow felt the need to twice stare down Mike Trout after a base hit, and then engaged him after Trout scored a run; this brouhaha even got the bullpens to jog in.

Now, who knows what was said to Ventura behind the closed doors of the Royals clubhouse at that point. He's just 23, recently handed a $23 million contract extension and expected to slide into the role of ace for a team that still feels it must disprove doubters after a wild-card berth nearly turned into a World Series championship last season.

That's a lot to take on. And after Ventura stepped to Trout – who typically resides atop MLB's affability chart – it should have been abundantly clear to any Royal that their budding ace needed a significant private tutorial, and perhaps even a mild public airing out.

Not so much.

"Competing," Christian Colon said after that game. "It happens in baseball."

"A real intense competitor," Yost said. "He got fired up there."

Ventura faced no discipline until Incident No. 3, when he eagerly took on the role of avenger by drilling Oakland A's third baseman Brett Lawrie with a 99-mph fastball, one day after Lawrie injured Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar with a hard slide.

Ventura received a fine for that transgression, but his teammates ceded the moral high ground – such as it is – when reliever Kelvin Herrera threw a 100-mph fastball behind Lawrie the next day.

That earned their indispensable reliever a five-game suspension. Perhaps more damaging was the utter lack of contrition on the team's part.

"We stick up for each other," first baseman Eric Hosmer said after the three-game ruckus with the A's. "We're a family in here. No matter if we're wrong or right, it doesn't matter for us, we're going to stick together as a team."

Sure, every major league team is a "family." Problem with Hosmer's statement: "No matter if we're wrong or right."

These guys have been wrong a little too much lately, particularly for a team that should have outgrown the "young and impetuous Royals" tag by now.

Hosmer is 25, and in his fifth major league season. Alex Gordon is 31, and most of their regulars are bunched in between them in age.

They are a charismatic and fun and dynamic team that's also won 12 of their first 16 games.

The growth from a baseball perspective seems complete.

From a maturity standpoint? That won't be done until the Royals realize the chip on their shoulder is no longer fuel, but a burden.

Ventura will incur most of the collateral damage from the Royals' violent April, and rightfully so.

But given the team's mentality, it's hard to expect a 23-year-old in his second full season to grow up when so many around him seem unwilling to do so themselves.

It's about time it happened.

PHOTOS: Thursday night's brawl in Chicago