Updated with video now. Not much of a fight. I was hoping Jonny Gomes went all Terry Tate on Shelley Duncan, but either way, we'll settle for any kind of Spring Training bench clearing brawl.
You had to expect something would happen this afternoon in the first Rays-Yankees meeting since Francisco Cervelli had his wrist broken by a hard play at the plate.
How dare a player trying to make the roster try hard. The Yanks whined all weekend about the play and feel Spring Training games should be taken lightly. Well, that is everyone except Shelley Duncan.
From Peter Abraham's live blog of today's game:
Awesome. You can bet we'll have video as soon as it's available. In the meantime, I'm immediately adding Jonny Gomes to my fantasy team.WE HAVE A BRAWL
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.
These teams play two more times in spring training and 18 times during the season. I suspect we’ll see plenty more fireworks.
Update: No video yet, but here's a quality pick of where Shelley Duncan's high slide landed. Akinori!!
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