We Blog Baseball!

Several commentators to our last post made the point that Duncan’s spikes-up play at 2nd base brought the Yankees together.

Well who would have suspected that just days later, the Red Sox would find a way to create unity without the possibility of a career-ending injury to Aki Iwamura.

Now anybody, everybody who breathes baseball knows of the lifelong hatred between the Pinstripers and Red Sox Nation. And without walking into a crossfire here, I do want to hand it to the Sox for their classy display of team camaraderie.

Some bloggers at espn and cbssportsline lost it for a bit there with the usual rants about overpaid players. But that completely missed the point. Because this was about overpaid players looking out for the support staff – the folks almost everybody overlooks. That’s right. It was all about the coaches and Red Sox staff who do the day-to-day baseball stuff behind the scenes.

Red Sox Bench Coach Brad Mills - Photo: AP

They don’t make the big bucks. Fact is the $40,000 they thought they were getting for the long trip to Japan - the same stipend the players were to get - is a sizeable chunk of their annual salary.

The Red Sox willingness to boycott their last exhibition game and the threat to forego the Japan trip was, in the words of ESPN “an extraordinary move.” Add to that the willingness of the Oakland A’s to do the same, and you’ve got some deep team loyalty and unity at work. The players of the two teams standing up for the folks of their team who don’t get the face-time or the press or the accolades. The folks no one asks for autographs.

Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon - Photo: J. Meric/Getty

It all came to a peaceful conclusion when Major League Baseball agreed to pay the managers, coaches and trainers on the trip $20,000 each from management’s proceeds. And The Red Sox agreed to chip in the rest and give the other team personnel the stipend to make the trip.

Here’s what some of the players and staff had to say:

“The players just stepped up and they did what I think was right,” Boston bench coach Brad Mills said.

Terry Francona declared: “We’re so united. And I don’t mean just the players. I mean the staff, the trainers and our players showed that and that’s what this was about. It wasn’t about being greedy. It was about trying to be unified.”

Oakland player rep Huston Street put it this way: “They’re just as much a part of this team as anybody. Playoff shares, coaches get an equal share. You look at previous Japan trips, coaches have gotten an equal share.”

Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell stated that giving $20,000 payments for the coaches would not have been acceptable when the players were making $40,000.
“We didn’t think that was correct,” he said. “Giving them half of that is not equal.”

How’s that for team unity!

It’s still Spring but the bad blood is flowing in the land of Major League Baseball. We all know about how Tampa Bay’s second baseman Elliot Johnson ran over New York Yankee Double A minor league catcher Francisco Cervelli last week fracturing his wrist – and the continuing complaints by new Yankee manager Joe Girardi. “It’s just disheartening in a spring training game,” Girardi said. “I just don’t understand it.”

The problem with that argument, of course, is that Johnson like all players are taught to play hard each and every out, Spring, Summer or Fall. As Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon put it: “We try to play the game the same way on March 8 as we do on June 8.” So the question always is what is playing hard and what is playing dirty. What is the right way to play baseball?

Yesterday things turned a whole lot worse for both teams. Shelley Duncan – who by the way was one of the loudest complainers on the Yankees – went into second base spikes high. You can take a look at a freeze frame to see where his left leg and spikes were in relation to Tampa Bay second baseman Akinori Iwamura.

One brawl and a day later there’s no surprise that the Yankees and Rays see the same play with completely different eyes. “I saw it a couple times,” Duncan revealed. “I still don’t understand why they were as upset as they were.” Duncan explained further: “The ball beat me by quite a bit, and when you’re out by a mile, there are only two things to do: try a weird slide around the base or to slide hard into his glove … I slid hard into his glove.”

Maybe I’m missing something here but his spikes are a heck of a lot closer to Iwamura’s groin than they are to his glove.

According to Joe Maddon, “What you saw today is a definition of a dirty play.” Maddon continued: “There’s no room for that in our game. It’s contemptible. It’s wrong. It’s borderline criminal. I can’t believe they did that. That was a blatant attempt to hurt Aki. And it was set up, it was planned, it was premeditated; it was all of the above. I don’t know what the difference is between that and a high stick in hockey. It was that bad.”

It’s always hard to know what an athlete’s thinking in the midst of action but it doesn’t help Duncan’s case to go back a few days and read his take on the Johnson-Cervelli incident: “They showed what is acceptable to them and how they’re going to play the game, so we’re going to go out there to match their intensity - or even exceed it.”

There’s not much doubt that on Wednesday March 12, Duncan exceeded it. Let’s hope that come the real season the Yankees can make baseball, not war. It’s our National Pastime after all – and we’re 5 years into a real war. Enough blood, it’s time for baseball.