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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
ARLINGTON, Texas — Adolis García took a 99-mph fastball to his left arm in Friday’s eighth inning and immediately turned to Houston Astros catcher Martín Maldonado.
“Why like that?!” García yelled, according to Maldonado.
“Like what?” Maldonado responded.
Two innings earlier, García hit a three-run homer that gave his Texas Rangers a two-run lead and celebrated emphatically, walking halfway up the first-base line and slamming his bat onto the Globe Life Field turf before making his way around the bases. Less than three months before that, García and Maldonado had jawed at each other at home plate in another benches-clearing incident. It all raced through García’s mind in a split second.
“I felt like that hit by pitch could’ve been worse,” García said, “and I told him that was not right.”
A series devoid of drama through its first four contests finally sprung to life in the pivotal Game 5 of this American League Championship Series, reigniting some of the tension between two division rivals separated by 250 miles. García hit the big home run in the sixth, then took exception to being plunked two innings later. Benches cleared. Three ejections were handed out. And then Jose Altuve finished it off with the ninth-inning three-run homer that sent the Astros to a dramatic 5-4 victory, putting them one win away from their fifth World Series appearance in seven years.
Maldonado was later asked if he believed the emotions of the eighth inning fired his team up.
“Yeah,” he said, “I do.”
García and the man who threw at him, Astros right-hander Bryan Abreu, were both ejected. Astros manager Dusty Baker was ejected, too, following a heated discussion with umpires who saw him fling his cap against the dugout railing. The hit by pitch occurred in the late stages of a two-run game, with a runner on first and none out, and it ultimately prompted the Astros to turn to their closer, Ryan Pressly, an inning early. Several members of the Astros pointed to that as their defense.
“It didn’t make any sense to me,” Baker said of the notion that Abreu hit García on purpose, later adding: “I can understand how he’d take exception to that; nobody likes to get hit. But you’re not going to add runs on in the [eighth] inning of the playoffs when they’re trying to win a game. … I don’t understand. I haven’t been that mad in a long time, and I don’t usually get mad at nothing.”
Rangers reliever Aroldis Chapman was among those who disagreed with Baker’s interpretation.
“Anybody who watched that game knows that he hit him intentionally,” Chapman said in Spanish.
Asked why, Chapman said: “I imagine it’s the way he celebrated the home run he hit [two innings earlier]. I imagine it’s because of that. But I don’t think there’s any reason to hit somebody the way he did. These days, guys hit home runs and celebrate the way they want to. That era of guys celebrating and then getting hit — that’s in the past. It’s really ugly on his part to have done something like that.”
“I mean, yeah, it doesn’t look good,” Rangers third baseman Josh Jung added. “Guy hits a big homer, watched it for a second and guy comes in who throws really hard — I know he said it slipped. But if you go back and watch it, it looks like it slipped straight at Adolis.”
Benches cleared between the Rangers and Astros at Minute Maid Park in Houston on July 26, in the wake of García’s fifth-inning grand slam. Marcus Semien exchanged words with Maldonado when he reached home plate and García later joined him, prompting benches and bullpens to empty. Semien had been hit two innings earlier. No punches were thrown that night. They weren’t thrown Friday, either, but García charged at Maldonado after most of the players had reached the playing field and had to be separated a second time. Yordan Alvarez, his Cuban countryman, walked with García in an effort to calm him, telling him Abreu wasn’t trying to hit him.
“Everybody on their side is going to say it wasn’t, everybody on this side is going to say it was,” Semien said. “The only one who really knows is the pitcher.”
Maldonado said he was set up outside and that the Astros “weren’t trying to hit anybody.”
Altuve said he had no issue with García’s celebration, saying he doesn’t find such displays of emotion “disrespectful at all.” Abreu agreed.
“I’m the kind of guy that I don’t care about celebrations,” Abreu said. “That was a big, big moment, big spot for him. He hit a homer, he got a chance to celebrate and do whatever he wants. I just went in and just tried to compete against him. That was a tough spot for me. I just want to keep the lead that they have in the bottom of the eighth and just tried to compete against him.”
Astros starter Justin Verlander, who gave up the home run to García and exited his start moments later, said he was “disappointed” that Abreu was ejected.
“The umpires are there to calm the situation, keep the game moving, not let things get escalated,” Verlander said. “But more importantly they’re there just to determine if something was intentional or not. In that spot, I don’t know how those six guys got together and determined that they were sure it was intentional, because I think from a baseball perspective it surely was not.”
Crew chief James Hoye and the other five umpires worked to separate the players, then huddled and “decided that the pitch that Abreu threw was intentional on García,” said Hoye, who worked left field. García was ejected for “being the aggressor” and continuing to go after Maldonado, Hoye added. Baker was ejected for arguing Abreu’s ejection, then refused to leave the dugout until Astros bench coach Joe Espada convinced him to, according to Hoye. MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill said the league will review the incident and determine potential suspensions “in a timely fashion.”
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy was peeved at how long it took to sort everything out, which he believes might have been part of the reason for Jose Leclerc not being sharp when he came back out for the ninth inning.
“The whole thing is a bunch of crap, to be honest, what happened there,” Bochy said. “Who knows what intensions are, but it’s not the first time it’s happened and couldn’t get the game going again. And I’m sure it affected him, because he came in to get an out there in the eighth inning. Maybe that played a part in it.”
Leclerc, who relieved Chapman with two outs in the eighth, gave up a leadoff single to pinch hitter Yainer Diaz and then walked pinch hitter Jon Singleton before serving up the three-run homer to Altuve on an 0-1 changeup low and in. Leclerc said the long delay was “no excuse. I need to execute my pitches and do a better job.”
Given what also took place in July, García was asked if it has become personal between him and Maldonado.
“I don’t have anything personal with anybody,” García said. “I’m just trying to play my game.”
ESPN’s Buster Olney contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com