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ALCS Game Five: Off, Guards

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Juan Soto

Juan Soto and everyone in Progressive Field knew bloody well where what he just hit was going in the top of the tenth Saturday night . . .

A Guardian shortstop trying to will a tenth-inning double play before he had full control of the ball. A Yankee right fielder already in line for one of the biggest paydays in baseball history willing to wait for the fastball an off-speed-throwing Guardian reliever proved only too willing to provide.

Brayan Rocchio lost the handle on the toss leaving two Yankees aboard instead of side retired. Guards reliever Hunter Gaddis struck Gleyber Torres out but wrestled Juan Soto through six off-speed breakers and a 1-2 count before someone, who knows whom, thought Gaddis could sneak a fastball past Soto, if not lure him into an inning-ending out.

Good luck with that. Showing precisely why he’s in line for a mid-to-high nine-figure payday this winter to come, Soto got the fastball for which he probably prayed hard. Then, he launched it into the right center field seats with the Yankees’ fortieth American League pennant attached.

With one swing Cleveland’s Progressive Field went from extra-innings thrill to funeral parlour. If that was the ballpark mood, imagine the Guardians’ clubhouse mood when the game ended, the Yankees had a 5-2 ticket to the World Series in their pockets, and the Guardians could only think about how far they’d come in how little time only to feel the big wrench of having not quite enough.

“Because we were so close,” said left fielder Steven Kwan, referring to those in the Guards’ uniform, not necessarily the now-finished American League Championship Series, “it makes it sting a little bit more.”

For the Guardians and their respected rookie manager Stephen Vogt, it was the worst possible ending to an ALCS in which they’d made a better than decent showing—none of the five games was decided by a margin larger than two runs—but lacked the kind of putaway potency with which the Yankees seemed overendowed. On both sides of the ball.

Consider: Twice, in Games Four and Five, Vogt had the opportunity to keep Giancarlo Stanton from making mischief. He could have walked Stanton instead of pitching to him. He pitched to him. Stanton made him pay with interest.

Especially in Game Five, when Guardians starting pitcher Tanner Bibee kept Stanton in check in the sixth inning with nothing but pitches off the zone but not yet dispatched. That was the moment someone should have told Bibee one of two things: 1) Walk him, be done with it, then get rid of Jazz Chisholm, Jr., a far more feeble plate presence. 2) If you must pitch to Stanton, keep the damn ball off the zone.

Bibee tried. The slider aiming for the lower corner ended up hanging up under the middle. Stanton sent it hanging over the left center field fence. Tie game at two each.

Soto slammed home the pennant-clinching exclamation point (did anyone really doubt after that blast that the Guards would go quietly into that not-so-good gray night in the bottom of the tenth?), but there are reasons Stanton ended up as the ALCS Most Valuable Player award winner. In a word, he made it impossible for the Guards to contain him. Still.

This series: Four hits, every last one of them clearing the fences. Eight hits lifetime against the Guardians in the postseason, every last one of them bombs. Three set-clinching wins against the Guards (2020, 2022, Saturday night), and Stanton has dialed the Delta Quadrant in each one of them.

That was the last thing the Guardians needed in a set during which their biggest bopper, third baseman José (The Most Underrated Player in the League ) Ramírez, was practically the invisible man. Oh, he had two doubles and a homer in the series, scored a pair, sent three home, but on a Saturday night when the Guards needed every man to patch the sinking ship Ramírez went 0-for-4 with an intentional walk.

Ramírez wasn’t the number one Guard culprit, though. Their closer Emmanuel Clase recovered his regular season form too little, too late to make a big difference. Rocchio was a little too tentative at shortstop. The rest of the Guardian bullpen seemed gassed by the middle of Game Four.

None seemed more so than Cade Smith—who had the dubious honour of not being told to walk Stanton to set up a likely double play in the Game Four sixth, and being allowed instead to serve Stanton a rising fastball that didn’t rise enough for Stanton to miss planting it out of sight.

Those late home runs from Jhonkensy Noel and David Fry in Game Three sure seemed like last year’s news suddenly. And that Guardian bullpen dominance during the season sure seemed like a figment of somebody’s warped imagination now.

Clase and Smith didn’t surrender three homers all season—but they got ripped for three in this set. Gaddis couldn’t be touched with anything including subpoenas all season—but there he was on the wrong end of Soto’s proved-to-be-pennant-winning detonation.

The team called it, invariably, a season of growth. The Guardians did indeed grow into themselves this year, even if they now face of winter during which they may have to think of a tune-up or three. They own a generally weak AL Central division, but they can’t afford to perform a hot stove league disappearing act.

That they got here at all despite losing their ace starter Shane Bieber for the season to Tommy John surgery tells you something about their resilience and their will. Not to mention losing Triston McKenzie to so much struggling after his 2022 breakout that he was disappeared into the minors. Not to mention Logan Allen lost likewise. Alex Cobb and Matthew Boyd weren’t quite enough to make up for that.

So Vogt had to over-rely on his stellar bullpen. On the regular season they were bank. In the postseason their exhaustion collapsed them slowly but surely. To the point where there’s speculation now that Clase might be considered tradeable for some rotation reinforcement. Might.

The Guards needed more against these Yankees and simply couldn’t find or keep it. In Game Five, they needed more than the brothers Naylor collaborating on a run in the second and Kwan singling Andres Gimenez home in the fifth. A 2-0 lead with elimination on the line isn’t enough against these Yankees.

Not that the Yankees took them for granted. Just ask their oft-criticised general manager, who’s had his job so long some Yankee fans might actually believe he was the guy who first hired Miller Huggins away from the Cardinals to manage them.

“I remember just going, ‘Oh my God’,” said Brian Cashman when Soto dropped the big bomb. “Did the prayer sign. And then knew that we had to somehow put them down in the bottom of the inning, because these guys don’t go easy.” Not even when Lane Thomas hit into the final out of the set, a long fly ball . . . to Soto himself in right field.

All that without Aaron Judge swinging one of the big Yankee bats. He managed to hit a pair out this ALCS but the Leaning Tower of 161st Street was otherwise one of the sleepiest Yankees at the plate. (5-for-31; thirteen strikeouts; two double plays.) His awakening in the World Series would be anything but welcome in the opposing dugout.

On, Guards!

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Cleveland Guardians

The Guardians celebrate their division series conquest. Ahead lay the Yankees for the pennant. Time for their star to be uncrossed at last?

The first time Cleveland went to the World Series? They were known as the Indians. And they won. (Yes. You can look it up.)

They edged to the 1920 pennant as the White Sox collapsed in the immediate wake of the Eight Men Out’s being suspended upon the Black Sox revelations. Then, they beat the Brooklyn Robins—your future Dodgers—in six games. (On the same day as the Series clinching game, ground for the Holland Tunnel joining New York to New Jersey was broken under the Hudson River. And, Man o’War, 1920’s Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes winner, beat 1919 Triple Crown winner Sir Barton in a match race in Ontario.)

The next time Cleveland went to the World Series? Still the Indians, and winning once again.

This time, they beat the Boston Braves, also in six games. Those Indians had a few Hall of Famers (Lou Boudreau, Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Satchel Paige) one of whom (Feller) provided a hand-held World War II spyglass with which he’d come home from World War II for through-the-scoreboard sign-stealing subterfuge down the stretch. Not very nice.

The next time Cleveland went to the World Series? Still the Indians. Burying the American League thoroughly in 1954.

So thoroughly that the usually triumphant Yankees could win 103 games and finish . . . second. As if to prove too decisively that no good deed remains unpunished, they were flattened in four straight by the New York Giants, a massacre that only began with a kid named Willie Mays and a certain play next to the Polo Grounds’ deep center field wall.

The next time Cleveland went to the World Series? It took slightly over four decades.

1995: A heartbreak loss to another team of Braves, this time roosted in Atlanta. Two years later: A worse heartbreak loss, off the bat of Edgar Renteria, swinging for a team barely entering kindergarten and destined to be dismantled posthaste, by their brain-frozen owner, before the champagne was barely washed from their hair.

The next time Cleveland went to the World Series? It took a sliver over two decades. Still the Indians.

They had the pleasure of tangling with another star-crossed team, out of Chicago. They had the 3-2 Series advantage. Those Cubs said, well, they have us right where we want them . . . and won the next pair, not without a lot of back-and-forth and wrestling. (And, one karmic Game Seven rain delay.)

Now, they are in their third year of life as the Guardians. They are about to begin an American League Championship Series against the Yankees, whose ancestors came up so short against them for the pennant exactly sixty years previous. And I find myself in an uncomfortable position.

You see, I have been a Met fan since the day they were born. The Mets are about to play the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. Wouldn’t I just love to see the Mets elbow, shove, bop, wrestle, and shiv their way past the Dodgers to reach this Series? Of course I would.

The Mets haven’t won a Series in 38 years. That’s slightly more than half the time since the last Cleveland Series conquest. I have seen the Mets win two Series. I’ve also seen my Red Sox (fan since the 1967 pennant race) win four Series in this century. I’ve seen the Cubs finish a 108-year rebuilding effort with a Series win—against a team of Indians one of whom now co-leads the Mets in postseason field and batting mayhem. I’ve even seen Washington win its first non-Negro Leagues World Series since Calvin Coolidge had to finish Warren G. Harding’s term in the White House.

Far as I’m concerned, everyone else can just hurry up and wait a little longer. I don’t want my Mets to lose. But I don’t want the Guardians to lose, either.

The Guardians have been just as star crossed if not more so since 1954. You think being a Cub, a Red Sox, a Met, or a Dodger could be excercises in extraterrestrial heartache? (And, headaches?)

Ask any Cleveland fan about such curses as Rocky Colavito (traded as spring training 1960 was about to end) or disasters such as illness (physical and otherwise), injuries, or both, to such promising sprouts such as Max Alvis, Larry Brown, Tony Horton, Ray Fosse, and 1980 Rookie of the Year Super Joe Charboneau.

Ask any Cleveland fan about Ten-Cent Beer Night in ancient Municipal Stadium in 1994. (Also known as the Mistake on the Lake in the Mistake on the Lake.)

Ask any Cleveland fan what really happened to the team’s first major free agency pitching signing, Wayne Garland, after he signed a ten-year contract in 1977. (Answer: He injured his arm in his first spring training game, pitched through the injury anyway to prove he was worth his deal, but never regained the form that made him attractive to the team in the first place.)

Ask any Cleveland fan why the former Tribe lost future Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley to a spring training 1978 trade. (Answer: a teammate having an affair with his wife.)

Ask any Cleveland fan about the year Sports Illustrated predicted they’d win the 1987 American League pennant . . . but went forth to finish dead last with 101 losses.

Ask any Cleveland fan about spring 1993. 1) Their new spring training home in Homestead, Florida was flattened by Hurricane Andrew. 2) They moved spring training to Winter Haven. 3) Relief pitchers Tim Crews and Steve Olin killed, and starter Bob Ojeda left alive with head injuries and long therapy to follow, when a legally-inebriated Crews drove his boat right into a Little Lake Nellie dock.

Ask any Cleveland fan if they’ve recovered from relief multi-instrumentalist Andrew Miller finally running out of fuel in Game Seven of that 2016 Series, then having one more stellar season in him despite a bad knee only to see the team fall to the Yankees in the 2017 division series.

It took five hard-played division series games and a Game Five dispatching of the Tigers’ best pitcher for the Guards to get to this ALCS in the first place. The exclamation point came from a guy acquired from the Nationals at the trade deadline. Lane Thomas went from the barely-known soldier to the man of the hour in the Game Five fifth when, with the bases loaded, he sent Tarik Skubal’s first pitch into the left field seats.

Now the Guards face the Yankees with key elements at full power. The side of Steven Kwan that suggested greatness has shown up thus far. José Ramírez, maybe the least appreciated superstar in baseball outside his home turf, is doing José Ramírez things. The Guards’ bullpen, maybe the best in the AL this season, suffers no fools gladly. Even those wearing Yankee uniforms.

These are the two best in the AL setting up to square off for the pennant. Almost like ancient times.

But I’ll put up with the usual hemming, hawing, gnashing, bellyaching, and execution demands from Yankee fans drunk deep of fractured entitlement (yes, they still think no World Series is legitimate without the Yankees in it) in order to see these Guards—perhaps the most star-crossed of this year’s LCS entrants and certainly one of the most star-crossed in major league history—come out of the coming skirmish with a World Series date and triumph.

Even if it might be against my Mets. (And it might be, even if the Mets didn’t look so wonderful being blown out by the Dodgers in NLCS Game One Sunday evening.) But I may sacrifice even that to see the stars uncrossed for Cleveland for once. Maybe.

Published originally at Sports Central.

One Sizemore to fit the White Sox

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Grady Sizemore

From being part of a Cleveland team that shaved off a fifteen-game White Sox lead in the AL Central . . . to managing the Sox the rest of this season about which “disaster” might be flattery.

Once upon a time, when life was fair enough and the American League Central seemed a likely White Sox possession, Grady Sizemore and his 2005 Indians managed to turn a fifteen-game White Sox division lead in July to a mere game and a half entering the regular season’s final weekend. Even while they lost six of seven to the Sox along the way.

Those Indians forced the White Sox to think about and execute sweeping those Indians over that closing weekend to start those White Sox on the march to the World Series—which they hadn’t won since the Petrified Forest was declared a national monument. Sizemore finished the season leading the Indians with his 6.6 wins above replacement-level player.

That was then; this is now. Now, Sizemore—who took time after his playing career ended to make himself a husband and father, then worked as a $15-per-hour player development for the Diamondbacks at the behest of his friend Josh Barfield, whose move to the White Sox brought him aboard as a coach last winter—takes interim command of the White Sox for the rest of this year. God and His Hall of Fame servant Bob Feller help him.

There’s no way Sizemore could have played that final 2005 weekend against the White Sox and imagined the day coming hence when he’d have the White Sox’s bridge, even on an interim basis the team insists will remain just that while they look toward hunting a permanent skipper over the offseason to come. Neither could his legion of adoring Cleveland fans imagine it.

That 2005 opened a run of four straight seasons during which Sizemore became one of the American League’s top center fielders (37 defensive runs above his league average; .572 Real Batting Average*; 107 home runs; 128 OPS+) and matinee idols. The performance papers made him a superstar; his wiry physique and boyishly handsome face (not to mention what some have called his porn star-like surname) made him a sex symbol.

But the most irrevocable unwritten rule of Cleveland baseball for so long has been that no good deed goes unpunished. Not even the one that made Sizemore an Indian in the first place.

He came to Cleveland in the package the Indians all but embezzled out of the ancient Montreal Expos (it included pitching star to be Cliff Lee and second baseman Brandon Phillips) in exchange for pitcher Bartolo Colon. That’d teach them, and Sizemore, perhaps in that order.

Around Cleveland, they didn’t name candy bars after Sizemore, but countless young women including a formal fan club known as Grady’s Ladies wore marriage proposals aimed his way on T-shirts in the Indians’ home playpen. (“I’m not trying to be the sex symbol of Cleveland,” he once told a writer who purred in print about his politeness and his modesty.) He managed to keep his marble (singular) and play ball; perhaps his worst known vice was driving a well-maintained baby blue 1966 Lincoln Continental.

“Good luck getting him to talk about himself,” said Indians relief pitcher Roberto Hernandez to Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci. “He’s such a quiet guy who’s only interested in playing baseball and doing what he can for the team.” What he did was become one of the game’s respected and feared leadoff men, with power-speed numbers to burn, a kind of Mookie Betts prototype, but he might have done it too hard for his body’s taste.

Grady's Ladies

This is how popular Sizemore was in his early Cleveland years. And that’s without showing the young ladies wearing T-shirts with marriage proposals for him.

That being Cleveland, and those being the Indians, Sizemore couldn’t be allowed to turn a promising first five years into a Hall of Fame career. He was battered, beaten, and bludgeoned by injuries that shortened three seasons following 2008 before leaving him unable to play at all for two to follow. He didn’t have Mike Trout’s statistics but he didn’t need those to become the Trout of the Aughts. He ended up playing in Boston, Philadelphia, and Tampa Bay without a fragment of his Cleveland best left to offer.

“Just coming back from one surgery is hard,” Sizemore told a reporter when he signed with the Red Sox. “When you lump seven in a short period of time, it kind of puts your body through the wringer a little bit. I kind of had to take a step back the last year or two, and kind of just get the body right and try to get healthy and not rush things.”

Sizemore had had a double and a bomb during a fourteen-run single-inning massacre of the Yankees in April 2009. At that season’s end, he’d undergo surgeries on his groin and his elbow. Followed by another abdominal surgery, back surgery, and three knee surgeries. The three-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner was reduced from a Hall of Famer in the making to an orthopedic experiment who’d be lucky to average 72 games a year over his final four major league seasons, sandwiching two full seasons his body forced him to miss.

The good news is, Sizemore is in splendid health today, and nobody’s in a hurry to see him turn the team around from joke to juggernaut. They believe in many things in Chicago, but magic acts aren’t among them. Not even if it might have taken one to end the Sox’s horrific 21-game losing streak Tuesday night or save Pedro Grifol’s job on the bridge. The skinny had it that Grifol would survive only long enough to see that streak end, if it ended.

Grifol survived to watch his charges beat the Athletics, 5-1, but the following day the White Sox couldn’t keep a 2-0 lead past the seventh, then couldn’t overcome a freshly minted one-run deficit in the final two innings. Those attentive to whispers that Grifol didn’t preside over the most communicative or tension-free clubhouse (his total record with the Sox: 89-190 over two seasons) probably noted Sox general manager Chris Getz making a point of mentioning Sizemore’s apparent knack for drawing people closer to him (unlike the guy he’s going to end up spelling when we execute him!) when announcing Sizemore’s original addition to the coaching staff.

Grady Sizemore

Sizemore, young and an Indian, wearing his love for the game unapolgetically while playing like a future Hall of Famer—before the injuries made him the Mike Trout of the Aughts.

“He’s got a strong understanding of the game, how to play the game,” Getz said of him when announcing his mission for the rest of this lost and buried season. “He’s very authentic and honest with his communication ability. And so we felt that Grady would be the right fit for getting us to the end of September and building this environment that’s more effective for our players. Grady is a very strong, steady voice that we look forward to having as the manager to finish up this season.”

A guy with baseball brains to spare who can endure seven surgeries in five years without looking for the nearest escape hatch to the nearest booby hatch is a guy who can handle getting these White Sox through a remaining season in which they’d kinda sorta like not to end up breaking the 1962 Mets’ modern record (40-120) for season-long futility.

The interim manager might even have a chance to so what some have thought impossible thus far this year. Those Original Mets sucked . . . with style. And laughs. Sizemore might not make these White Sox more stylish in self-immolation, but he might actually get them to laugh—even to prevent them from thoughts of sticking their heads into the nearest ovens.

The White Sox would have to win thirteen more games to elude liberating those 1962 Mets from the top of the bottomcrawling heap. If Sizemore can get that much out of them from this day forward, he might make other teams cast an eye upon him as a manager without an interim tag attached. He might even make the South Side believe in magic, after all.

The waive

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Lucas Giolito

Lucas Giolito—from an Angels trade deadline acquisition to one of five put on the waiver wire approaching its deadline . . . and potentially impacting pennant races.

Just when you thought nothing weird could happen to or emanate from the Angels, they found a way to disabuse you. With one act last week they helped yank a couple of pennant races inside out. Whether it was bold or boneheaded is a matter of opinion. Likewise whether it was both at once.

And that was on top of Shohei Ohtani going down for the count on the pitching side with that ulnar collateral ligament tear . . . but continuing on as a designated hitter regardless of the ongoing risk, and without deciding to undergo the Tommy John surgery he’ll have to face most likely.

In one week, the Angels went from mere disaster to the guys who just might have played key roles for somebody else’s postseason trips. The way they did it may have set a precedent somewhere between foolish and dangerous to the integrity of the game.

They gambled on keeping Ohtani rather than flipping him for remake-beginning prospects at the trade deadline. They leaned on an illusory 11-3 string to finish July and traded for pitcher Lucas Giolito (White Sox) and left fielder Randal Grichuk (Rockies). They opened August going 2-9. They finished the month going 8-19.

They saw the season sinking faster than the Lusitania before August finally ended. First came Ohtani with the UCL tear. Then, as owner Arte Moreno and his minions saw their all-in push at the trade deadline turn to all-out pushed just enough out of the races:

* The Angels put Giolito, Grichuk, and three other players—relief pitchers Reynaldo López and Matt Moore, plus outfielder Hunter Renfroe—on waivers last week.

* Yes, the waiver placements were salary dumpings, and they just might give a lot of other teams ideas about dumping salaries at no cost to the dumpers and miminal cost to the dumpees. To claim and receive Giolito, López, and Moore cost the Guardians what Aaron Judge may hand out in tips, $3 million.

* Yes, too, that just might have given the Guardians new pennant race life in an American League Central that isn’t exactly a division built to strike fear in the hearts of the rest of the league.

The Guards claimed Giolito, López, and Moore before the end of 31 August. Meaning those three, should they hold up and pitch in well enough, will turn up in the postseason if the Guards manage to sneak into the wild card picture or even sneak the Twins off the top of the Central heap. They swung into a good start from there—they took the first two of a weekend set with the Rays, including a Saturday walkoff on an RBI single and a sacrifice fly.

If the Guards’ motives included cutting into the Twins directly, they got off to a grand beginning even before they could pencil Giolito into the rotation and with only López seeing action prior to Sunday. They start a critical set with the Twins on Labour Day. It’s a wonder the Twins and others didn’t start ringing commissioner Rob Manfred’s or players union chief Tony Clark’s phones off the hook.

This is what a few people feared possible when the old waiver trade system expired in 2019. Until then, teams could trade players they put on waivers and, since they put everyone on the roster on the waiver wire until then, disguise whom they really wanted to deal while working out the particulars on the deals they really wanted by the close of business 31 August.

If that sounds a little bit surreal, be reminded that a few Hall of Famers changed teams in just that way, including Jeff Bagwell (to the Astros, before he’d even seen substantial major league action), Bert Blyleven (to the Twins), John Smoltz (to the Braves), Justin Verlander (to the Astros the first time), and Larry Walker (to the Cardinals, after his long Colorado tenure).

But that was then: the traders got value or at least potential value via players in return. This is now: The dealers get salary relief if they want it, as the Angels have, but nothing else. Unless it’s luxury tax relief, which the Angels will get since the waiver dump gets them below the $233 million seasonal threshold. Using it as a salary dump just might raise more than a few players union hackles and make more than a few other owners a little edgy, too.

The Reds claimed Renfroe plus Yankee outfielder Harrison Bader off the waiver wire in time to have them on a postseason roster, too. They’ve taken two out of three from the upstart Cubs (doesn’t that sound a little weird to say?) since, but with little to no help from their new waiver wire toys yet: Bader entered play Sunday at 1-for-3 with a stolen base; Renfroe, 0-for-9.

They have a six-game National League Central deficit but the Reds awoke Sunday morning with fingertips on the third NL wild card with the Diamondbacks and Giants having fingertips on the second card. The Guards are five games behind the Twins in that AL Central and slightly beyond the third AL wild card.

It all began with the Angels deciding the time for a salary dump came a little ahead of the usual off-season. The trouble was, too, that it dominated baseball’s news wires and helped some people miss a few more glorious doings, in particular Braves star Ronald Acuña, Jr.’s entry into a club with a single member—himself.

Last Thursday night, Acuña ripped Dodgers starter Lance Lynn (a trade-deadline acquisition from the White Sox) for a grand slam and his 30th homer of the season. It made him the only man in Show history to hit 30 or more bombs and steal 60 or more bases in the same year.

When he swiped numbers 60 and 61 against the Rockies last Monday, two Rockies fans hit the field running to greet him, one hugging him and the other  accidentally knocking Acuña on his derriere. Prompting an almost immediate discussion on increasing player safety on the field.

Not even the Angels’ waiver deadline salary dumping could ruin the best moment of Acuña’s 30/60 Club founding—his former teammate Freddie Freeman, the day after the founding, handing Acuña one of the bases from Thursday’s game.

There really is something to be said for Don Vito Corleone’s observation (in the novel The Godfather) that great misfortune often leads to unforeseen reward. The Guards and the Reds hope the Angels’ misfortune leads them likewise. Who hopes it doesn’t give enough owners any more cute ideas about salary dumps and, thus, prospective pennant race distortions?

“Down goes Anderson! Down goes Anderson!”

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Tim Anderson

White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson hits the deck after Guardians third baseman José Ramírez (second from left, restrained further by a White Sox player) answered Anderson’s foolish challenge to fight with a flying right cross to the side of his head. White Sox first baseman Andrew Vaughn (25) would ultimately drag Anderson off the field as the two teams scrummed.

Once upon a time, Tim Anderson said he wanted to be today’s Jackie Robinson when it came to putting the fun back into baseball on the field. When the Yankees’ Josh Donaldson greeted him with, “Hi, Jackie,” during a game last year, the White Sox shortstop decided the joke’s shelf life expired not long after Donaldson first dropped it on him a couple of years earlier.

The benches and pens emptied, and Anderson’s White Sox teammates urged and nudged him back to the dugout before any serious damage could be done. The following day, Anderson—hammered with “Jack-ie, Jack-ie!” catcalls most of the day by the Yankee Stadium crowd—smashed a three-run homer that finished a doubleheader sweep, holding an index finger to his lips as a “shush” gesture to the catcallers.

But that was then and this was Saturday in Cleveland against the Guardians. In the sixth inning, Guards’ star José Ramírez went diving into second to beat a throw in from the outfield and finish his stretch into an RBI double. He slid right between Anderson’s legs.

Anderson had infuriated the Guards the night before with a tag knocking rookie Brayan Rocchio off the base, turning a double into an out when the original safe call was reversed rather controversially. Now, he seemed to try dropping a too-hard tag upon Ramírez to no avail. According to Ramírez, Anderson said he wanted to fight.

Ramírez held up his right arm as if hoping Anderson might help him up from the ground. Getting none, Ramírez rose on his own and pointed at Anderson, apparently objecting again to Anderson’s needlessly harsh tagging. Anderson assumed a boxing position as rookie umpire Malachi Moore tried to keep the pair separated.

Oops. Moore decided the better part of valour was to back away. Anderson threw a pair of rights as players on both sides approached. Then, somehow, some way, Ramírez swung a slightly wild right that caught Anderson flush on the left side of his face and knocked him to the ground. It was like Argentine boxing legend Oscar Bonavena’s wild punching style before Muhammad Ali outlasted him in 1970.

Guardians broadcaster Tom Hamilton couldn’t resist referencing another Ali fight when Ramírez connected: “Down goes Anderson! Down goes Anderson!” That went almost as viral as the scrum itself.

This wasn’t the usual bench-clearing incident in which the “brawl” was usually just a lot of hollering, shoving, more hollering, more shoving. This was two players swinging as if they’d mistaken themselves for hockey players. “It’s not funny,” said Guards manager Terry Francona post-game, “but coming [into the clubhouse] and listening to Hammy, it’s hard not to chuckle.”

It might have been Francona’s only chuckle of the evening. Not only did the White Sox finish what they started, a rather rare win, but Francona plus White Sox manager Pedro Grifol and their combatants Ramírex and Anderson were thrown out of the game post haste. So were Guards third-base coach Mike Sarbaugh and relief pitcher Emmanuel Clase.

Anderson wouldn’t talk to the press after the game, but Ramírez had plenty to say. “He’s been disrespecting the game for a while. It’s not from yesterday or from before,” the Cleveland third baseman began.

I even had the chance to tell him during the game, “Don’t do this stuff. That’s disrespectful. Don’t start tagging people like that.” In reality, we’re here trying to find ways to provide for our families. When he does the things he does on the bases, it can get somebody out of the game. So I was telling him to stop doing that and then as soon as the play happened, he tagged me again really hard, more than needed, and then he reacted and said, “I want to fight.” And if you want to fight, I have to defend myself.

Cynics suggest Anderson should get a two-week suspension for starting the fight in the first place. They say, not implausibly, that he shouldn’t exactly protest such a suspension, because his season—injuries contributed to his pre All-Star break .223/.259/.263 deflation, though he was bouncing back after the break—is much like that of the White Sox whole. Lost? Try disappeared.

Anderson has been admirable in the past for wanting baseball to be fun again, on the field and encouraging more black youth to consider the sport as a profession. He’s been capable of big moments, maybe none bigger than the game-winner he drove into the corn field behind the outfield in the first Field of Dreams game.

He wants to be remembered as an impact-delivering player. He overcame a lot to make himself a two-time All-Star. He looked like a classic baseball hero that night in Iowa. He may have thrown too much of that away Saturday night.

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn used the trade deadline to start dismantling the sorry enough team he’d built. Saturday night was actually the first White Sox win since the deadline itself. They’d lost thirteen of their previous seventeen until Saturday night. It’s not implausible to think Hahn will continue the remaking he began come the offseason.

But it’s also not implausible that Anderson, a player who’s meant plenty to the White Sox in the past, might be in his final days in their silks. If this proves the catalyst for that, it would negate enough of what he wants to mean to the team and to the game he loves. Far worse than his face or his ego getting dropped by a flying right in a foolish fight, that would hurt.