These may be meaningless games, but you wouldn’t know it in Tucson this afternoon, as things got a bit heated between the Mariners and Diamondbacks. The groundwork was laid in the first, when Cliff Lee was covering home on an RBI single and got tangled up on the play with Arizona catcher Chris Snyder, the on-deck hitter, who was in the same area, telling the runner to slide. Lee tripped over Snyder and words were exchanged.
Who Says Spring Training Means Nothing? Cliff Lee Ejected When Tucson Tempers Flare
↵Next time up, Lee sent a pitch over Snyder’s head. The batter was not amused, took several steps towards the mound, and the benches and bullpen cleared, though without any actual violence. Lee was ejected, and Snyder got the last word, hitting an RBI double off the new pitcher, the run going on to Lee’s line.
↵Lee might have been lucky. Snyder is a big MMA fan, and took up Muay Thai a couple of seasons ago to help with his conditioning. And he famously took a ricocheted baseball to the crotch in 2008, fracturing a testicle - and stayed in the game, finishing out the inning behind the plate. Personally, Snyder is perhaps the guy on the Diamondbacks roster with whom I’d least want to get into a rumble.
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