Rays 4, Blue Jays 3: You Will Be Missed, Brett Lawrie

this makes it look worse than it was, but only a little

Yes, I am disappointed that the Blue Jays kicked the ball around to the tune of four errors yeah four errors last night, but I am so used to losing to David Price that I am pretty much over that already. This is in part because of a most unpleasant distraction from the loss itself in the form of Brett Lawrie wildin' out on home plate umpire Bill Miller, after Miller took offense at Lawrie leaving the box early on a pitch that was so far outside as to be indisputably a ball, but even so, bro, even so. Miller, whose intention was pretty clearly to, you know, teach the kid a lesson, made an embarrassingly bad call, and then just a regular ol' bad call for strike three on the next pitch. Both were balls, though the second one was close enough that in any other circumstance you wouldn't really raise an eyebrow at it. But you really have got to think Miller himself knew they were balls and was basically just insisting on getting his dick out. 


And that kind of thing happens around young players all the time, right? Like, nobody thinks it's right (do they?), but everybody knows that it happens, right? It's baseball. It has been that way for at least the near thirty years I have been watching, and it will probably continue to be that way until robots. It was nothing special, or didn't have to be, except that it was as one-run game, bottom of the ninth, and the pretty remarkably hot-headed Brett Lawrie probably already felt like a butt because of a throwing error earlier, and so this happened:

Well OK not really but mostly:

Yikes, right? This is not Delmon Young chucking a bat a dude, but it is on the spectrum. Yeah, it bounced in the dirt (Mr. Splitty stylee), which is maybe like the tiniest bit mitigating, but Lawrie is so getting suspended for this one, man. There is just no other way. The MLBPA is awesome so maybe they can awesome it down to a mere five gamer or something, but I honestly wouldn't be stunned if this comes out at or around twenty. Why don't we just call it ten? Would that be cool for everybody?


An excellent "stay classy" moment followed as the umpires left the field:

Finally, let's just see if I actually know how to embed things . . .



OK I guess I can.


Anyway, all around, a pleasant evening at the old ballyard, eh fellows?


KS