Baseball players don’t often come to blows.
Being a non-contact sport, it’d be rare to see two players square up to each other.
Yet, Bryce Harper and Hunter Strickland rewrote the script on Monday night in their Major League Baseball encounter.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUsahWllUev/?taken-by=espn
With Washington Nationals up against the San Francisco Giants, Strickland (the pitcher in question) was trying to keep his side in the game and had one pitch remaining to strike out Bryce Harper.
Strickland claimed that he tried to keep the ball on the inside but Harper saw red when he was struck by the ball.
The immediate reaction is that Strickland did it out of bitterness after Harper hit two home runs off of the pitcher back in the National League Division Series in 2014.
Yet, speaking to reporters after the game, Strickland denied that what happened was relevant to the past.
“Yeah, I can see how that kind of stands in people’s minds but that’s the past,” Strickland said about 2014. “I left the ball over the plate a couple of times to him and he’s taken advantage of that. So obviously I’d rather miss in than over the plate.”
And Harper also spoke after the game, revealing his frustrations.
“I don’t want to go on a baseball field and try to fight somebody,” Harper said. “Especially when it’s somebody that it’s in the past. It’s so in the past that it’s not even relevant anymore. They won the World Series that year. I don’t even think he should be thinking about what happened in the first round. He should be thinking about wearing that ring home every single night. I don’t know why he did it or what he did it for, but I guess it happens.”
Although this isn’t the pettiest incident we’ve seen on the sporting field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y3fuTicq8w
Oh, and who can forget these guys?
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