A lot has already been written about – what was arguably – the best benches-clearing baseball brawl in years yesterday, so I won’t belabor the facts once again.
Earlier: Bad News for Baseball’s Biggest Stars: Mike Trout Hurt, Bryce Harper Brawl https://t.co/FY0TZT4D6L
— Brett Taylor (@BleacherNation) May 30, 2017
But if you missed it, here’s the short version: Giant’s pitcher Hunter Stickland threw at Nationals right-fielder Bryce Harper over a couple of home runs from back during the 2014 postseason … a postseason in which the Giants beat the Nationals and went on to win the World Series (watch the homers/read more about the source of the conflict here).
But, of course, that’s not the reason Strickland gave to reporters after the game. In fact, according to Stickland he wasn’t throwing at Harper at all – he was just trying not to leave one out over the plate! (lol!o!lo!l!Ol!o1lo!Lo!).
Check it out:
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Here’s the money quote from Strickland (emphasis mine):
“Obviously, I’ve left the ball over the plate a couple times to him and he’s taken advantage of that … so [I’ll] just mostly go inside and obviously I got in a little bit too far.”
Yeah … just a little bit too far in. Right.
There’s obviously not much else you’d expect Stickland to say – players rarely ever admit to throwing at someone – but that doesn’t stop his “I was just throwing inside!” defense from being hilariously thin. But that’s all he’s giving us, so that’s all we have to dissect.
And now that we’ve dissected it, all I can think is …