soapbox

Well, not quite, but still this

doesn’t look comfy.

The back story is that a couple days ago, a Tampa player was trying to score but the NYY backup catcher was blocking the plate.  It’s common baseball knowledge to not slide into the catcher’s shinguards so instead you just try to run him over.  Because it was spring training, or something (I think it was mostly new manager Joe Girardi establishing himself with his team) the Yankees were very vocal about being upset.  Then in the next game, Shelley Duncan gave the Rays secondbaseman the Jackie Robinson treatment.  Wasn’t cool then, isn’t cool now, Shelley.  (Then again, with a name like that, he’s gotta overcompensate for something.)

The Tampa manager summed up my feelings pretty well: “In Tampa, that play you saw at home plate was a good, hard baseball play. What you saw today was the definition of a dirty play… There’s no room for that in our game. It’s contemptable. It’s wrong. It’s borderline criminal, and I could not believe they did that.”