Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

In the first inning of the game Yankees pitcher Heath Phillips was ejected for hitting Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, but there were two men on and the ball barely nicked him across the chest, but the ump ejected Phillips anyway. Then things got a little crazy.

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

From Peter Abraham:

Shelley Duncan (of course) started the top of the second with a single. He tried to go to second as the ball rolled behind third base and was out by five feet. Duncan slid in with his spikes exceedingly high at Akinori Iwamura and was tagged out. He was immediately ejected.

Tampa Bay right fielder Jonny Gomes raced over and tackled Duncan and the benches cleared. There didn’t seem to be any punches thrown.

Gomes has been ejected as well. So were Bobby Meacham and Kevin Long.

I would think Duncan would get suspended for what he did. It was pretty blatant.

UPDATE: Just to make it clear, Duncan slid in with his right spike high in the air. Whether you think it was right or not is your call, but that’s what he did.

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Here are some quotes from the Rays players from Rays Report, and as you might expect, they're not too happy with Ducan's slide.

“Dirty play,” said B.J. Upton. “Just a flat-out dirty play. Period.”

Jonny Gomes said he wasn’t surprised Duncan did what he did considering his comments to the New York media this week that he would consider retaliation for Saturday’s play, and he didn’t hesitate to get involved.

“That was sort of second nature,” he said. “I was taught from T-ball all the way up to have your teammate’s back. With that guy trying to hurt a teammate, I just acted how I acted.”

“I probably could have done a lot of things worse, but it is a baseball field and there’s fans and kids watching,” said Gomes. “I just had to let him know, that’s not going to fly with me on the field.”

Troy Percival was in the clubhouse for the play, but he saw the spike marks visible on Iwamura’s uniform pants, above his knee on the inside of the leg, and wasn’t happy.

“You’re just going out there, spikes high, trying to put them into somebody?” said Percival. “There’s no room in baseball for that kind of stuff. Ty Cobb’s been gone a long time.” ...

... “It’s not typical of them, that’s for sure,” said Percival. “They’ve always been a professional organization. They’ve always played hard and they’ve always played smart. I won’t say that about today’s game.”

Manager Joe Maddon had this to say:

“What we saw today is the definition of a dirty play. 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.”

And here's Duncan's take on his slide:

"I made a hard slide into [Iwamura's] glove," he said. "When I'm out there playing, I like to play hard. In my head, I wasn't thinking about a message. They see me playing hard every day.

"To me, there's no malicious intent at all. I just felt I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I play the game one way. I'll never stop playing the game that way."

And Yankees skipper Joe Girardi:

"The code is play hard, and you play the game the
right way."

These are certainly not Joe Torre's Yankees, that's for sure. I don't agree with all this happening in a spring training game, and the play was kind of dirty, but it's good to see that the Yankees will no longer take crap from other teams. Maybe this year A-Rod and Jeter won't both be at the top of the HBP leaders list:

DeJesus-KCR	23
Rodriguez-NYY	21
Garko-CLE	20
Guillen-SEA	19
Sizemore-CLE	17
Youkilis-BOS	15
Jeter-NYY	14

(baseball-reference.com)