For the past two decades, they have been among the worst teams in baseball. But while the Royals’ and Blue Jays’ luck is changing, there are still many years of frustration to unload — at each other, it seems.
On Sunday, hit batsmen prompted shouting matches, which prompted a benches-clearing tiff, which prompted ejections, which prompted two raging teams to issue uncensored postgame taunts.
It all began with Royals starter Edinson Volquez plunking Josh Donaldson on the left shoulder in the first inning. The two traded stares as Donaldson slowly walked down the first-base line, and both dugouts were warned. Two innings later, Volquez “missed” with a pitch that went up and in on Donaldson, ending up at the backstop.
“He’s a little baby,” Volquez told reporters after the game. “He was crying like a baby.”
“He can’t take it,” Volquez said of Donaldson. “I don’t know why. He hit a lot of homers in the first couple of games and he was pimping everything he does. Somebody hits you, you’ve got to take it, because you’re pimping everything you do.”
Here’s a home run Donaldson hit Saturday. You be the judge of the “pimping.”
A detente between the two teams lasted just four innings, with Kansas City again becoming the aggressor. Reliever Ryan Madson hit Toronto newcomer Troy Tulowitzki on the right forearm in the seventh before coming high and tight again to Donaldson. After some shouting from both sides, Toronto manager Josh Gibbons was tossed from the game.
The next inning, Aaron Sanchez, a Toronto reliever, allowed the simmer to boil over, hitting Alcides Escobar on the thigh as benches on edge finally cleared.
" I was worried Josh was gonna cleat someone"- @justinwoods2299 @BringerOfRain20pic.twitter.com/04ypOalzxt
— Reid Humphrey (@ReidHumphrey11) August 2, 2015
“Our guy loses a two-seamer and hits a guy in the knee when we’ve had four balls thrown at our neck the entire day and our guy gets ejected, it just doesn’t seem proper,” Donaldson said after the game.
“I think they’re used to pushing people around,” Toronto starter R.A. Dickey said of the Royals. “So when they come onto the playground and there’s a kid that’s bigger than they are for a day, I think it probably [ticks] them off. And I can’t blame ’em.”
The yapping did not stop at the clubhouse, either. Another Royals starter, Yordano Ventura, took to Twitter to rips Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista.
According to Yahoo, in a message written Spanish and since deleted, Ventura said: “We’ll meet again later and if you do that with me, you’ll see what I’m about. I don’t care about anybody. I used to respect you, but you’re a nobody. … You got lucky this time, but MLB doesn’t get canceled after this season. Keep running your mouth. … You need to stop giving signs. You’re gonna get it from me for being fresh and you really are a nobody.”
Oh, the game? Toronto won, 5-2.
