In the seventh inning of Tuesday’s Orioles-Blue Jays game, Baltimore rookie Jason Garcia threw behind Jose Bautista. Instead of making this big thing, with beanballs fired back and forth, Bautista settled the matter in the perfect way – with a long home run and some jaw jacking.
That’s how you do it. Make them pay on the field. Bautista’s pimp job and home run trot were the stuff of legend too, even if Ryan Flaherty and Adam Jones didn’t seem to appreciate him taking his time.
I’d prefer that incidents get settled like this instead of through more head hunting and beanballs. After Bautista homered, there weren’t any other incidents. No one got hit. No one got thrown at. No one got hurt. And while Jones and Bautista shared words and both had some post-game comments about one another, they didn’t seem all that heated compared to what we’ve seen in the past with other incidents.
“All right, you hit the home run, but he’s got 200-some in his career, it’s not his first one, it’s not a walk-off, it’s in the middle of the seventh inning,” Jones said. “Hit it. … Don’t walk halfway down the line. Respect the game, and I know he does, but at that moment right there, he didn’t. And when it happens to my team, I’m going to take offense to it.”
“You throw at me and I’m not going to forget,” he said. “And if I get you right after, I’m going to enjoy it, and I did. I have no regrets about it.”
Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time that this has happened between the Orioles and Blue Jays. Bautista took exception with Darren O’Day in 2013, and got revenge with a late-game homer further along in the series. Bautista was hit by O’Day a year ago as retaliation for a questionable pitch thrown at Caleb Joseph by Marcus Stroman.
And a week and a half ago in Baltimore, O’Day once again went after Bautista…and Bautista did what he did to Garcia on Tuesday night.
Settle it on the field without headhunting. Toronto has done a decent enough job at that during their feud with the Orioles, and I’d like to see more teams do it that way.
