Photo: Mark J Terrill/AP/Shutterstock
Major League Baseball hassuspended12 players and coaches from the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners following amass brawlbetween players on Sunday.
The longest suspension went to Phil Nevin, the Angels' interim manager, who has been banned for the next 10 games. Anthony Rendon is suspended for five games when he returns from injury, Andrew Wantz for three games, Ray Tepera for three games and Raisel Iglesias for two games,ESPNreports.
In addition to the players, the Angels' assistant pitching coach, bench coach, interpreter and catching coach were also suspended from one to five games each.
Three Mariners players received suspensions, with the roughest punishment going to Jesse Winker, who received a seven-game ban,CNNreports. J.P. Crawford received a five-game ban and Julio Rodriguez two.
According to MLB, all of the three Seattle’s players will appeal the decision.
After the announcement was made, Seattle’s Winker spoke to CNN and apologized to fans after cameras caught him putting his middle fingers up at them as he left the field at Angel Stadium.
“The only thing I’m going to apologize for is flipping the fans off,” he said to CNN. “That’s it. As fans, they’re spending their hard-earned money to come watch us play a game, and they didn’t deserve that, so I apologize to the fans, especially the women and children.”
Mariners Manager Scott Servais, who was ejected Sunday but not suspended, also reflected on the fight before Monday’s game.
“It’s not something that should be a part of Major League Baseball,” Servais toldMLB. “Certainly, you can say, ‘Well, this should have happened or that should have happened.’ You can’t go back in time and change it. So there will be some suspensions coming and it’ll hurt, because there are players involved that play a lot for us and they do a really good job. And any time you lose a key guy in the lineup, it hurts.”
On the Angels, both Tepera and Iglesias are appealing and were eligible to play against the White Sox on Monday. Iglesias maintained his innocence on Sunday, but MLB said that he threw a bucket of sunflower seeds onto the field once he was told he was ejected from the game.
Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Angels.Mark J Terrill/AP/Shutterstock
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The fight unraveled on Sunday after the Mariners got upset with a series of pitches from the home team,ESPNreported.
Angels pitcher Andrew Wantz threw one early in the game that came close to Mariners' Julio Rodriguez head, the outlet reported. Then, a few innings later, a pitch from Wantz hit Winker in the hip, which seemed to spark the fight.
ESPN said that the tensions between the two teams began the night before, when Mariners' Erik Swanson threw a fastball near Angels' Mike Trout’s head during the ninth inning.
“The benches are clear,” the announcer said, as throngs of players started fighting.
The athletes were seen punching, shoving and piling on top of one another. While the chaos appeared to calm down for a moment, it quickly picked up again, leading to eight ejections.
“That probably shouldn’t happen in the game, what happened out there today,” Servais told reporters,CNNreported.
“Emotions running high, but it was pretty clear what was going on. They switched, put an opener in there to throw some balls at us,” he continued. “Got out of hand from there and kind of a black eye.”
Nevin said he thinks a factor that contributed to the incident was the fact that the two teams had played one another eight times in a matter of 11 days.
“Look, you play eight games in a matter of a week against the same team, things like this happen,” the acting manager told CNN. “The scheduling, tensions, that’s baseball sometimes, unfortunately.”
“There’s some ugly incidents once in a while. I think that’s just what happened today,” he added.
Reps for the Angels, Mariners and MLB did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The Angels went on to win the game with a 2-1 score, and are next set to play the Mariners on August 5.
source: people.com
