During last night’s game between the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays, Coco Crisp tried to steal second base in the 6th inning. When he tried to slide into second, Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett put his knee down in front of the bag, which is a no-no since someone can get seriously hurt.
So in the 8th inning when Coco tried to steal second again, he took matters into his own hands and took out second baseman Akinori Iwamura with a hard slide. Then during a pitching change, Coco and Rays manager Joe Maddon exchanged pleasantries with Coco dropping an f-bomb or two.
After the game, Tom Caron and Dave McCarty broke down what happened during the NESN postgame show. That is in the first part of the video and the second half of the video contains the postgame interview with Coco.
video courtesy of NESN
I love the fire Coco shows in the interview. Hopefully this is end of it and there’s no retaliation in tonight’s game.
Update: David Chalk over at Bugs & Cranks has the video of the incident as well from the ESPN broadcast of last night’s game.
“Tic for Tac”?! Fucking priceless!
Kurt Rambis dad dropped a few while he was on the mound too saying more than once “that was fucking bullshit”.
ESPN is happy that, at least, the Red Sox are mixing it up with another AL East team. They can keep their focus on the AL East when discussing baseball.
It is abundantly clear that Bartlett did not put his knee down with any intent to injure Coco Crisp. The throw was wide to the third base side and he was trying to get as low as possible in an attempt to be in the best position possible to make the tag. While it was not a smart play by any means, it was not intentional.
Had Coco not hurt his thumb, there would not have been any such backlash and you know it.
Crisp’s slide was an intent to injure, and this is just inexcusable. He can try to justify it to Red Sox Nation all he wants, but anyone with half a brain who isn’t on board the Boston Bandwagon could tell you that he overreacted. It was a childish, immature, and classless move on his part, and his efforts to convince everyone that what he did was sensible are simply ridiculous.
And yes, though part of me would love to see him beaned in the back with a pitch tonight, I too hope that these childish shenanigans are all over for the time being.
Guess not.
Watching the replay again, I’ll echo the sentiment that Bartlett had no intention of hurting Crisp, while Crisp had every intention of knocking Iwamura into next week. (I’m sure Crisp would say that HE had no intention of hurting Iwamura, he just wanted to kick the crap out of him. How one can do that without hurting someone, I don’t know.)
yeah that didn’t last too long tonight. video coming up on that one.
its totally stupid to drop your knee like that. Someone is going to get hurt either the runner or the infielder. if Crisp had gone in feet first he tears up Bartlett’s knee.
Also kinda bush to be held down by one guy why two other guys throw haymakers with one of them having come all the way in from the outfield to do so.
Gomes and Crawford better hope Timlin, Beckett or even Schilling at a later date dont get a crack at them they be pulling a Rawlings out of their ear.
Shields was just doing what a pitcher should do it was dumb for Crisp to go to the mound but what happened in the pile will not be forgotten. These teams have a history. Somewhere Pedro Martinez is secretly wishing he could drill someone.