King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Is it OK to play hard in spring training? Answer for Yankees: Not when the other team does it.
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March 11, 2008 | There's a little brouhaha, or maybe just a brouha, this week over just how hard you're supposed to play in spring training games.
New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi got the brou haing, or the ha brewing, when he complained about a home-plate collision Saturday that injured a Yanks farmhand named Francisco Cervelli. After a Tampa Bay Rays minor leaguer named Elliot Johnson smashed into Cervelli, a catcher, at home plate, breaking his wrist and putting him out for eight to 10 weeks, Girardi called it "disheartening" and said he didn't understand a play like that in a spring exhibition game.
"Plenty of times during the season, that's part of it. I understand. He was playing hard," Girardi told mlb.com. "But to me, that's just not the time to do it."
Yankees first baseman Shelley Duncan told the New York Daily News that it never would have occurred to him to bowl over a catcher in a spring-training game. Until, the paper noted ominously, now.
"What it does is it opens another chapter of intensity in the spring training ballgames," Duncan said.
Come on.
Spring training games aren't intense? A strange sentiment coming from a baseball lifer -- Duncan's dad is St. Louis pitching coach Dave Duncan, who was a big-league catcher for a decade -- who at 28 has yet to play a full season in the majors. Shouldn't Shelley Duncan, who took four years to graduate from A-ball, know that guys trying to make an impression in spring training would run through a brick wall if they had to?
What's some 175-pound catcher compared to that?
Also: There are 175-pound catchers?
This column is rarely one to take the side of Don Zimmer, but the Rays coach had it right when he told the New York Times, "I can't believe that he went after it the way he did; that's not Joe Girardi."
"You block the plate," Zimmer continued. "If I slide into him and break a leg, nothing is said. Instead of breaking my leg, I bowl him over and it's not the right play? Well, to me it's the right play, spring training or no spring training. Play the game the right way.”
Zimmer, it should be noted, is 77 years old, so yes, absolutely, if he bowls over the catcher, something's wrong. He should have learned his lesson when he tried to bowl over a pitcher four years ago.