Bickering between two coaches ends up in an open brawl between Bryce Harper and Lendy Castillo-MLB
Everything was going smooth between the Washington Nationals and the Chicago Cubs before the former’s third base coach Bo Porter and the latter’s bench coach Jamie Quirk turned up pointing fingers and nearly abusing each other.
Since the debate was initiated by Quirk, he was ejected. His punishment resulted into resentment that prevailed in the whole of the Cubs’ club house. For the same reason perhaps in the next inning after the ejection, Cubs’ reliever Lendy Castillo threw a
pitch which narrowly missed hitting Bryce Harper’s leg.
Thinking that the reliever has deliberately attempted at hurting his leg, Harper became furious and treaded toward the mound in fury while giving an impression that he is going to treat Castillo roughly.
Immediately realising that Harper is out to do something nasty with the reliever, the Cubs’ catcher Steve Clevenger and umpire Jerry Lane stepped in to stop him and tried to cool him down.
However the anger had reached such a level that immediate stoppage of Harper and the resolution of the issues was not possible. Thus, both teams’ players made their way into the infield with some of them shouting and pushing each other while umpires tried
to disperse the crowd of the team members which had thronged the place.
Eventually the problem was resolved and the match resumed with the Nationals winning.
After the incident, Porter commented.
"When I was younger, I did Gold Glove boxing," he said. "My trainer would always tell me before the bell rang, `Just in case you didn't know, when this bell rings, that guy over there, he's going to hit back.'"
Regardless of what happened later on and how the Nationals’ players jumped at the Cubs and shoved them, one thing was almost unanimously accepted and that was the role of Quirk in igniting the fight between the players. The words that he spoke in frustration
ended up in the full-blown altercation on the field.
"It was the bench coach's frustration in us handing it to him for a couple days," Nationals’ manager Davey Johnson said. "If they want to quit competing and forfeit, then fine. But we're going to keep competing."
Harper will be looking to put this incident aside and focus on playing his normal game.
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