Joe Maddon In Aftermath Of Blue Jays-Rangers Fight: 'Players Should Police Everything'
(CBS) One of baseball's veterans and most respected voices, Cubs manager Joe Maddon didn't believe it was a bad look for the game when Rangers infielder Rougned Odor slugged Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista with a right hook Sunday in a feud that dates back to last season's playoff series between the teams.
"If you go back and play back the tapes from the '60s, '70s, '80s and even before then, you'll see a little bit of that in every decade," Maddon said on the Spiegel and Goff Show on Tuesday. "So whenever it pops up, obviously it's going to garner more attention. I don't think it's awful by any means. I think it's something that just did happen. We're so politically correct these days regarding everything."
The Rangers-Blue Jays bitterness dates back to Game 5 of last season's American League Divisional Series, when Bautista stared down his go-ahead homer in the seventh inning and submitted a bat flip for the ages that angered Texas. In the eighth inning of Sunday's game, the Rangers hit Bautista with a pitch in the midsection, and while running the bases on an ensuing grounder, Bautista took a hard, late slide into Odor. Pushing followed, and Odor punched Bautista in the face as the benches were clearing.
MLB hasn't announced any discipline for Odor yet, though he expects to be suspended for several games.
"Obviously it's going to be contorted a bit, maybe even bigger than it is," Maddon said, noting the social media age in which incidents like this blow up bigger than they used to. "It's just something that happened. It's not going to happen in the games today. It just happened because it's based on this incident that happened months ago, and it'll move on.
"I think if you're in the Texas locker room, they kind of like what they did. And the guys in the Blue Jays locker room understand what happened too. It's just part of the game. I really believe that. I don't believe there's anything really wrong with it. Of course, if it happened every day, then it'd be a little bit more difficult and different, but I think it's such an isolated incident, just let it alone and let it move on."
Maddon's comments are rooted in his belief that players should police the game, not managers or outsiders.
"The players should police everything," Maddon said. "That's the way it should always be. I'm not into legislation, I've said that 1,000 times. That was a hard slide into second base, and of course it was rooted in last postseason. They handled it the way they did. I would anticipate it should be done from now on. I think both sides made their point. You move it forward, and your'e not going to have that problem again. That's what I would bet is exactly what's going to happen. It was a hard play. It just happens that way sometimes.
"But I do really like when players are in charge of policing themselves."
Listen to Maddon's full interview below.
Joe Maddon on the Spiegel and Goff Show
