This weekend was a hard one for Boston Red Sox fans. On Sunday, former Red Sox star, Josh Beckett hurled the 9th no hitter in Dodgers history while 2 other 2012 Sox, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez continued through rather successful starts to 2014. On the other side of the country, the Boston Red Sox were angry and not too willing to simply stretch in the 7th inning.
Boston was trailing 8-3 after Craig Breslow lost all control and allowed the Tampa Bay Rays to score 7 runs in the 7th inning and suddenly, Yuneal Escobar of the Rays decided to try for 3rd base. He made it there without contest and the play was ruled defensive indifference. As the Boston Globe's Nick Kafardo wrote after the brawl, "the Red Sox thought the Rays were piling on". Now is not the time to discuss the sportsmanship of base stealing in the late innings of a lopsided game but regardless, the Escobar and Sox backup catcher David Ross began barking at each other with Escobar removing his helmet and pointing at the Sox bench.
To put things simply, before anything more transpired between Escobar and the bench, he was distracted. Johnny Gomes came barreling in from his position in left field to shove and throw punches as Escobar and 3rd base coach Tom Foley. Both benches then emptied and more punches were thrown by Mike Carp, Jose Molina and Sean Rodriguez. In the end, Gomes, Escobar and Rodriguez were all ejected from the game as a result of the brawl and the Red Sox would eventually lose the game by a score of 8-5 less than a half hour later. So what is the outcome of all of this?
Well once again, Johnny Gomes proved to the world how committed he is to his teammates. Gomes said after the game that he had no problem with the stolen base but once Escobar started fighting his away around his 3rd base coach and screaming at Ross and the Red Sox bench Gomes felt like he had to get involved.
He said of Escobar, "He was yelling at our dugout. He kept yelling, took his helmet off, and continued to yell. I don't know, I don't have much patience, don't have much time right now to be in an arguing match. He can take the bag all he wants, you know, but yell in my dugout, point in my dugout, take your helmet off and basically challenge our whole dugout, I'll have a problem with that."
Gomes also saw that yelling at Escobar was not working. He employed a different media to get his message across.
“I figured the hands-on approach was a little more appropriate,” Gomes added.
There you have that fact to answer some of your questions about the outcome of this brawl but on top of that there are questions as to how this brawl might have united the rest of the team.
"Everybody enjoys a little dustup once in a while,” said Red Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo. “I think our guys came together. We stuck up for each other. Personally, I think it could be what we needed.
“We showed some emotion. Our guys got their point across.”
But in a way, this fight seemed like an easy way out. The Boston Red Sox are currently in the midst of their longest losing streak in 20 years and are surely frustrated about the abysmal appearance of their win loss record. While fighting may temporarily reverse that anger and/or infuse the fan base with a bit of excitement, it is so much easier to run out and fight than it is to buckle down and win a ball game and in truth, it has been this mantra of taking the easy way out that has pinned the Sox in this undesirable position.
What the Red Sox need to do now is realize that this little shoving match is not the WWE smack-down that many have portrayed it as and that they need to focus on the aspects of baseball that matter. Those aspects include actually putting the bat on the ball, throwing strikes and making plays in the field when they matter. And beyond that, they need to just shut up and grind through the rest of this losing streak. This is a case where throwing punches or plunking an opponent with a fastball will do nothing to boost the morale of this stumbling baseball team.
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