Two Guys Sports
Bruce BostwickFollow-up: Red Sox and Rays Suspended for Thursday's Brawl
June 7th 2008 09:21
Coco Crisp will miss seven games due to suspension.
Well, I must say I was slightly wrong. Bob Watson handed out the suspensions today for the brawl between the Red Sox and Rays on Thursday. Coco Crisp did indeed get a longer suspension than any other player involved. It was only one more game than Rays pitcher James Shields, but nonetheless it was more. They haven’t disclosed the amount of fines included in the punishments, but I would hope that is where they hit Crisp harder, since he deserved to probably have about 3 games more than any other involved.
In all eight players were suspended for their roles in the incident. You will notice there are more Rays than Sox on this list. I agree with Carl Crawford of the Rays who said, “More of our guys participated. Or our guys got caught on tape.” I think it was just a matter of who got caught on the tape for the league to review again and again. Even in the ESPN clip I added yesterday you mainly see the Rays activities. As well as Crisp who got seven games, and Shields who got six games were the following six players; Rays: Jonny Gomes and Edwin Jackson for five games each, Carl Crawford for four games, and Akinori Iwamura for three games. . . Red Sox: Jon Lester for five games, and Sean Casey for three games.
The league has staggered the starting dates of the suspensions in an attempt to not leave the teams short-handed.
I am a little surprised that Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon didn’t get hit with a couple days of suspension. After seeing the punishments handed down he commented, “I want to be very clear: I defend everything our guys did. I feel actually proud of the way we handled the situation that was presented."
It will be interesting to see if any of this spills over into their future series this season since it looks like they will be battling for first place for the better part of the season. They will play nine more games during the regular season. Six in Tampa, and three more at Fenway. Six of those games will be in September, and the way it looks now they will be important, so tempers might be really sure for those games. The teams have already played nine games with the Sox sweeping two three game series, and Rays also sweeping one three game series.
June 30 – July 2 @ Tampa Bay
September 8-10 @ Boston
September 15-17 @ Tampa Bay
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