Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut. Hear that, Tommy Pham!
Tommy Pham, now playing in the minors for the Phillies, decided to opine on the dropped fly ball by Cincinnati center fielder Dane Myers on August 20 that would have been the final out. The error scored two runs, putting the Cardinals ahead in the top of the ninth and opening the floodgates for four more runs. The Reds struck back with four of their own but fell one run short, losing 10=9.
Pham, who formerly played for the Reds, posted this on X: What’s going on is we have cf’s today who know the value of stealing catches to help their ooa numbers go up bcuz it improves your war so you have this, a game that is lost bcuz the cf didn’t want the lf to catch the ball bcuz he wanted the points. (Glossary: cf=center fielder; lf=left fielder; ooa=outs above average; bcuz=because; war=wins above replacement)
As the Bible says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).
Pham’s statement made me feel negatively toward Myers—until I heard his side of the story. Myers and left fielder TJ Friedl had talked about the sun being a factor for the left fielder. “We had talked before the play. Anything in that gap with how we were shaded was supposed to be mine,” Myers said. “So, I know the sun may have been tough. Pretty loud for the last out of a game. I called him off and just didn’t make the play.”
If you watch the play, you can see Friedl trying to shade the sun with his glove, while Myers did not appear to have a problem with the sun. He just dropped the ball. “TJ looked like he was fighting the sun and I was kind of glad that Myers called him off,” said Reds manager Terry Francona. “Just didn’t look it into his glove. Just glanced off.”
Accusations like Pham’s are rare in professional baseball, but not unheard of.
In 2022, Chicago White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson accused New York Yankees slugger Josh Donaldson of making a racist remark by calling him Jackie Robinson during a game against New York. “He just made a, you know, disrespectful comment,” said Anderson, who is African-American, “Basically, it was trying to call me Jackie Robinson. Like, ‘What’s up, Jackie?’ I don’t think it was called for.”
Some background is helpful. In a 2019 interview with Sports Illustrated, Anderson stated, “I kind of feel like today’s Jackie Robinson … because he changed the game, and I feel like I’m getting to a point to where I need to change the game.”
Josh Donaldson (photo courtesy NY Daily News)
Major league baseball players are notorious for sarcastically teasing each other. Donaldson, who is white and admitted to calling Anderson “Jackie,” said he has “joked around” with Anderson in the past using the same reference from the Sports Illustrated interview. If a player is going to compare himself to the great Jackie Robinson, he should expect some pushback.
“My meaning of that is not any term trying to be racist by any fact of the matter,” Donaldson said. “Obviously, he deemed it disrespectful. And look, if he did, I apologize. That’s not what I was trying to do by any manner, and that’s what happened.”
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were the best of friends—until 2001 when Esquire published a cover story on A-Rod. His comments on Jeter started out well enough: “Ours is such a brotherhood that there’s definitely no rivalry there…. I’m his biggest fan, and I think it’s vice versa.”
But he continued, “Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him. He’s never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. And he hits second—that’s totally different than third and fourth in a lineup. You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie and O’Neill. You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you.’ He’s never your concern.”
Photo courtesy Times-Herald
That broke up the friendship. Jeter said, “Those comments bothered me because, as I said, I’m very, very loyal. As a friend, I’m loyal. I just looked at it as, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ … It goes back to the trust and the loyalty. This is how the guy feels; he’s not a true friend, is how I felt. Because I wouldn’t do it to a friend.”
A-Rod was a Texas Ranger at the time, Jeter a Yankee. But when Rodriguez was traded to the Yankees in 2004, the tension between them was palpable.
“The first month, I didn’t feel comfortable with me being there,” said A-Rod. “I didn’t feel like he [Jeter] felt comfortable either. I think early on I was in that circle of trust. I think that changed when I said some things he didn’t like and that for him, broke the trust, and I think from that moment on it was never quite the same ever again.”
Don Sutton and Steve Garvey were Dodger teammates from 1969 to 1980 and even had lockers next to each other. But there was no love lost between them. Their feud came to a head during the 1978 season. In a Washington Post article, Sutton said, “All you hear about on our team is Steve Garvey, the All-American boy. But Reggie Smith was the real MVP. We all know it. [Smith] has carried us for the last two years. He is not a facade. He does not have the Madison Avenue image.”
Garvey confronted Sutton and asked if the quotes were accurate. Sutton said they were, then leaped at Garvey and flung him against a row of lockers. The two players went down heavily and clawed at one another, trying ineffectually to land punches.
Many Dodgers didn’t like Garvey, and apparently, not everyone liked Sutton, either. According to the late Tommy John, during the brawl someone yelled, “Stop the fight; they’ll kill each other!” Catcher Joe Ferguson responded, “Good!”
