Fiesty Devil Rays

First off, yes I called them the Devil Rays. Where is my 10k or 25k (whatever the amount!) fine? So we had a real good baseball brawl last night. Coco Crisp was nailed in the thigh and charged the mound. The pitcher, James Shields, greeted him with a wild right handed hay maker.

I thought pitchers were only supposed to use their non-throwing hand (Shields is a righty) to save their hand from potential fractures. So Coco easily dodged this blow and was even able to land some of his own.

However, in the ensuing scrum Johnny Gomes comes rushing out of the Rays dugout to jump on the pile and take some really manly punches at Coco as he is trapped on the bottom of a pile.

Johnny Gomes is of course the man who came rushing out of right field to tackle Shelley Duncan of the Yankees during spring training.

So this isn't the first time he has jumped at the chance to be involved in the fight. Let's just make sure my point is made. Gomes was taking Cheap shots.


Gomes, Shields and Crisp were all ejected from the game. I expect Gomes to get the biggest suspension as he was the 3rd man in and could've exploded the situation into something much, much worse. Not to mention he has already had an altercation this year, in spring training no less.

Fight night didn't end there!

After the brawl (between the 4th and 5th innings) Kevin Youkilis and Manny Ramirez got into a little fight and had to be seperated.

The current theory is that Youkilis took exception to Manny not being out on the field for the brawl. Manny was DHing last night though so odds are he was back in the clubhouse as most DHs do after their at bats. Coco's at bat was 4 hitters after his. He did get onto the field albeit late. I wait to hear more about this. We probably won't though as Tito does a good job keeping this stuff in house.

Photos from boston.com
Duncan/Gomes Photo from espn.com
- posted by Doug @ 11:14:00 AM