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Back in the late aughts, the Phillies and Mets had a real rivalry going. The Mets were a Yadier Molina home run and Carlos Beltran refusing to take the bat off his shoulders away from a World Series appearance in 2006, and spent the next few years looking up at the Phillies, with their core of Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, in the NL East. Neither team liked each other very much. Then the Mets fell into the cellar, and the Phillies joined them soon after, and you can’t very well have a rivalry when you’re fighting for third place.
The Mets are now good again somehow, and the Phillies have truly bottomed out, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have some bad blood. Mets reliever Hansel Robles tried to quick pitch Darin Ruf (when the pitcher throws after the hitter is in the box, but before he’s fully ready), but did it a little too early — before Ruf looked up. That’s bad, and dangerous, because if the ball had gotten away from Robles, Ruf wouldn’t have had time to get out of the way our protect himself. The Phillies were understandably upset, none more so than bench coach Larry Bowa.
Bowa and outfielder (and former Met) Jeff Francoeur leapt out at the dugout to yell at Robles, and Bowa wouldn’t go back in, even threatening to have Mets first baseman Daniel Murphy beaned (Murphy was probably jawing on behalf of his pitcher). That threat also came with some bad words. See if you can guess what they are!
The Mets and Phillies have one more game in their series on Wednesday night. Check in to see if Daniel Murphy makes it out unscathed.
(Via MLB.com and Ryan Thibs)
