Duncan to face Rays tomorrow
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- March
- 14
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The Yankees have a split-squad doubleheader tomorrow, one game against Tampa Bay in Tampa and the other against Detroit in Lakeland.
Shelley Duncan will stay in Tampa and play against the Rays. Is Joe Girardi inviting trouble?
“I just want to move on,” he said.
Girardi said he saw the replay of Duncan’s slide and believes that he wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt Akinori Iwamura. “Shelley plays hard,” he said.
Francisco Cervelli, meanwhile, showed up today with his arm in a sling. He said he appreciated his teammates standing up for him.
MLB’s dean of discipline, Bob Watson, is in China with the Dodgers and Padres. No word on when word on suspensions will come down. But Duncan will likely get 3-5 games. Girardi said he “would be shocked” if he gets suspended. But he could get a game.
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on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 10:20 am by Peter Abraham.
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Chad Jennings
Sam Borden
Josh Thomson
I asked this in one of the other posts, but is it true that the fans booed Shelley when he came to bat?
What are the prevailing suspension theories:
Shelley – 3-5 games
Joe G – 1?
Gomes – ?
Joe “Maddman” (liked that one from the last thread)- ?
Heath Phillips (that was the pitcher, right) – ?
Just throwing some names out there…anybody else possible?
LCâ„¢ :
there may have been a few, but there were a lot of “visiting team” fans there. on TV you couldn’t hear any boos though…
And how does the St. Pete paper say suspensions today when we still “have no word on when suspensions will be handed down”
would it look suspicious if an errant ball hit bill maddon?
Say this for Girardi, there is no backing off with him.
Personally, I thought he would skip playing Duncan in the Rays game.
I have to say though I admire his stance.
Now, its the Rays court as to whether or not this “feud” continues.
If they nail Duncan, things carryover to the regular season.
If they don’t, this thing probably dies its needed death.
if they nail duncan, i feel more sorry for the ball
They will hit Duncan. I think that will end it. We hit Longoria, remember? If they do hit Duncan, we need to respond by hitting a homerun, not a person. Just because the Longoria hit was an accident, it still happened. We need to let it go and get them back somewhere down the line when it has been forgotten.
PS: My favorite moment last season was when Roger retaliated to hit Rios. I think everyone at home called it when it happened and it was the right thing to do.
But this incident.. it’s just silly. Everyone has their revenge, lets end it.
“We hit Longoria, remember?”
A ball brushed his jersey.
Let’s stick to the facts.
Yeah, really, they didn’t “hit” Longoria.
That’s the problem with this stuff.
There is no context to the reporting.
Heath Phillips has TWO guys on base, a run in, and can’t find the plate.
He isn’t “hitting” anybody on purpose. The ball barely grazed Longoria and Chad Fairchild (the home plate umpire) overreacted.
If Duncan gets hit tomorrow, the Yankees shouldn’t retaliate.
Just wait until the regular season starts, then nail Carl Crawford (their best player) as close to the upper shoulders as possible. That will end it.
Once guys start seeing the pitches get closer to their heads, they tell their manager enough with the feuds.
I have a feeling Duncan won’t get hit tomorrow because, if he does, then Bob Watson will be forced to come down very hard on the Rays. I think if anything happens, it will happen during the regular season.
Even Longoria didn’t think it was intentional / a big deal
i like girardi putting duncan right back in there. now the ball is right right back in maddon’s court and in his face. now he’s the one with a decision to make. when maddon plays his first major league game he can tell girardi what the unwritten rules of baseball are. maddon never played even one game in the major leagues.
maybe because he’s one of only a few major league managers in history who never played major league baseball, he’s trying on this macho act. going mano to mano with girardi will only make maddon look like the fool. don’t think for a second that girardi doesn’t now that maddon spent his whole playing career in the minor leagues.
he’s just too smart to say it.
I hope they didn’t boo him, LC. Some people need to learn history. A good example of this is on p. 226 of David Halbestam’s book, Summer of ‘49 (hardcopy). If anyone gets a chance, read the paragraph on that page regarding how DiMaggio protected Rizzuto. It may be enlightening.
so, once again, no tv, no sound for today’s game??
Halberstam. My error.
It’s the absolute right move to have Shelley in the lineup. If the delusional Rays choose to hit him so be it. Shelley can just stroll up the 1st base line with the type of smirk that says, “Play your silly game … there’s 18 games when the real bell rings”. No words needed or spoken.
Suspension. MLB is crazy if they suspend Duncan. That was good baseball. That happens all the time.
“Suspension. MLB is crazy if they suspend Duncan. That was good baseball. That happens all the time.”
I disagree. It’s pretty rare that someone slides in with his spikes at knee/thigh height.
If anyone gets suspended it will be a joke. Baseball will start to be looked at as a sissy sport. But of course Bob Watson hates the Yanks so anything is possible. But if anyone gets suspended it should be Gomes for starting the brawl.
“But of course Bob Watson hates the Yanks so anything is possible.”
That’s funny. I guess you don’t realize that fans of other teams that shall remain nameless call Bob Watson “Yankee Bob” because of what they see as Bob’s bias towards all Yankee players.
Shelley just became my new favorite Yankee and I’m sure I’m not the only one jumping on that bandwagon. We need a hard nosed gritty player like Shelley who isn’t going to stand idly by while his teammates are thrown at or wronged in anyway. I can only hope that Jeter and the other veterans follow suit by not necessarily getting into brawls, but at the very least supporting their teammates.
IMO, Watson has become the PC and marketing police instead of the guy who maintains order in MLB. He wants only one kind of baseball played and frankly that’s marketing crap, a fear that fans won’t like it if baseball starts to look a little rough around the edges. While I believe strategically and tactically there are very, very few times it makes sense to hit anybody, when it does happen, however, it’s not a 911 call for “shots fired.”
Nevertheless, I see Watson awarding some days off, primarily because Duncan’s a newbie and non-Yankee fans see him as overly aggressive without the talent to back it up (i.e., a goon), and Girardi’s a new manager and he’s not Joe Torre in stature…yet. Maddon might get a game for making light of the situation in his initial comments and thus contributing to the retaliation. Johnson doesn’t get anything. Gomes, however, should be the worst hit of all because he was the “third man in” to use a hockey term. Iwamura even tried to stop Gomes. Talk about a goon.
I really don’t see how anyone can defend what Shelley did. He tried to intentionally spike an opposing player. He should get about 10 games and Gomes should get 3-5. You really can’t have guys sliding into bases with their spikes up.
He probably expects Duncan to get plunked and just wants to get it over with.
Pete,
I gotta say here that I think *you’re* actually making this story greater than it should be.
3-5 games suspension for Duncan? For a hard–but perfectly legal–slide into second base? What? I think a 1-game suspension may be fair, just to send a message, but it’s not like Duncan threw a pitch at anyone’s head or threw a punch or did anything with outright intent to hurt someone.
I’ve seen slides of second base where the runner rolls over the second basemen (which can cause broken ankles) or where they overslide/miss the base by 5 feet (which is illegal). Duncan honestly looked shocked to be tossed from the game.
This isn’t a Clemens did-he-do-it-or-did-he-not. It’s much more gray than that.
You said on ESPN that it was intentional, and of course Duncan intended to go in hard. But you seem to really think Duncan deserves severe punishment, and you’re telling this to the national public–influencing public opinion in a way that may be extreme.
Inviting trouble by playing his 1B in a game? What? It’s the right move getting him back out there. Is he going to sit Duncan every time the Yanks face the Rays?
Bob Watson played for the Yanks for a few years (over two and a half decades ago). Let us have some loyalty.
He never played from the Tampa Manta Rays of Anaheim, or whatever they’ll call themselves next week.
maybe the yankees should have sweeney murti plant some anthrax in the rays dugout…that will put an end to this ridiculous “feud”.
ESPN bias ??? ….. nah, it just looks that way. Yeah sure.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn.....ortCat=mlb
desti(NY), i read that yesterday. made me throw up in my mouth
Girardi better not be suspended for Opebing Day.
Just posted this in the other thread — LC, I was at the game yesterday and two Yankees fans sitting near me were booing Shelley and saying nasty things about him. I was highly annoyed and yelled something back at them (lol). I was hoping Shelley would hit one out, but his play in the field seemed to shut them up, thankfully.
“He never played from the Tampa Manta Rays of Anaheim, or whatever they’ll call themselves next week.”
now THAT is funny.
That ESPN bias stuff is a bunch of BS. It’s always been a myth.
Yankee fans just don’t like anything ESPN saying anything positive about the Red Sox and any criticisms of the Yanks is viewed as anti-Yankees (whether the criticism is legit or not).
To be fair, Red Sox fans do the same thing. RSN calls ESPN the YES Network II.
The truth of the matter is that ESPN is both pro-Yankees and pro-Red Sox.
These two teams alone get 50% of the total baseball coverage. And it’s not even close.
I think Duncan gets 50 games and maybe 30 days in the slammer, because even Joe Maddon said, “That was borderline criminal!” Maybe Bob Watson will decide that MLB should just “Let them play! Let them play!” and that totally worked out for the Bears…
Will someone in the Yankee front office call the commissioner’s office today to “express concern” about possible retaliation, a la Andrew Friedman, the Rays’ executive vice president for baseball operations?
Ok, it is a Red Sox story, but it is sweet.
“desti(NY), i read that yesterday. made me throw up in my mouth”
Why? It’s a cute father-son story.
it was way too long and filled with yankee hatred. and how someone could be born in brooklyn as a sox fan just boggles my mind.
well, I can see how people born in Brooklyn can hate the Yankees, but to be sox fans or ay other fans of teams outside NY makes me scratch my head too.
I have no problem with the story but i have a soft spot for kids. i will have to write one with my son at his first yankee game!
Shelley plays hard just like that player who ran over Cervelli.
My grandma lived and grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and when they moved to LA, she actually hated the Mets, because they took over the NL market. So as much as it pained her, she aligned herself with the Yankees.
So I guess it could go either way
nice
Ty Cobb used to slide into a base with his spikes up, I guess he is a dirty player too then.