Last night there was a pretty odd set of events during the Nationals-Reds game. You can catch the video of what happened here. For those of you too lazy to click, here's the gist of it:
- In the 8th inning, Brandon Phillips and Wil Nieves are involved in a play at the plate. Nieves already had the ball so Phillips had to plow through Nieves to score the run. He succeeded and upon touching home plate he proceeded to pound his chest.
- As you would probably expect, the Nationals didn't take kindly to Phillips' celebration.
- Luckily for the Nationals, Phillips was due up in the top of the 9th, which gave Miguel Batista the opportunity to kindly remind Phillips what happens to players who celebrate too much in the form of a bean ball to the back.
And that's where this gets really interesting.
After the bean ball, Phillips just ran down to first base as if nothing happened while the umpire tossed Miguel Batista. And that was it. No brawling, no exchanging of words, no bat pointing, no anything. C'mon guys, it's still early June. I would expect that kind of apathy from two teams in September who are both out of the playoff race, but right now? I expect better.
Unfortunately, this is also the point in the program where I have to point out that Brandon Phillips was once a prospect in the Expos' farm system, until he was traded along with Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore to Cleveland for Bartolo Colon. That trade still stings quite a bit.