So it’s fitting that seven months and one day after game 5 of the Blue Jays series in Toronto, Sunday’s brawl, 214 days in the making, got it’s first spark in the form of another bat flip, from Ian Desmond on his 3-run home run in the 7th, to give the Rangers the lead.
Advertisement
The game was overshadowed by a fracas during the eighth inning that started when Jose Bautista was hit by a pitch from Matt Bush.
The brawl started when Bautista slid through the base at second, forcing Odor to throw wildly to first on an attempted double play.
Bautista: Hard slide into second base.
Bautista and Odor were ejected after the brawl, as were Toronto third baseman Josh Donaldson and Texas bench coach Steve Buechele.
Toronto manager John Gibbons was ejected for his part in the brouhaha, and called Odor’s strike “gutless”.
Toronto coach DeMarlo Hale and Toronto pitcher Jesse Chavez were then ejected when Chavez hit Prince Fielder with the first pitch when the game resumed about 10 minutes after Odor’s punch.
Chavez was also sent from the field, given that a warning had already been issued after Bush had hit Bautista earlier in the match.
The Rangers won 7-6 but the Major League Baseball clash was overshadowed as Odor landed a punch to the face of Bautista with the respective benches cleared twice at Globe Life Park. “Just to be next to them, it motivates me to finish my career strong”, Beltran said.
Odor, who nearly certainly faces a suspension, was unavailable to the media after the game. “That’s all I’ve got to say about that”.
These two teams won’t meet again this season unless it’s in the playoffs.
It’s going to take a really big man, if not a crazed one, to ever think about taking on Odor again after that punch.
The two exchanged words, but the game continued on. I take offence to everybody that thinks this is a game that shouldn’t be played hard, that it shouldn’t be played with emotion and intensity’. We don’t know if Bush was ordered to hit Bautista, or simply wanted to endear himself to his new teammates, but this wasn’t a pitch that simply got away.
The two teams have a recent history of bad blood, with Blue Jays, Jose Bautista having famously hit a three-run homer to send them into the ALCS a year ago. “If you’re going to read into it you can write whatever you want, but don’t tell them I said it”.
“It was ugly and unfortunate”, Gibbons said.
Advertisement
Bottom line: The Rangers never had the moral high ground in this case, from the moment reliever Sam Dyson barked at Bautista even before his October home run stopped rattling around the aisles of Rogers Centre.
