Ruxinn of The League once said that fantasy football is a religion. It seems to be more than just that for Cincinnati Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and San Francisco Giants outfielder Joc Pederson, who had quite a moment before Friday's series-opener at the Great American Ballpark.
Pham slapping Giants slugger Pederson over fantasy football is something that's just hard to believe, but that really happened, folks. A multi-millionaire pro athlete seriously went that far against a fellow multi-millionaire baseball player, and here's Pederson to tell perhaps everything we need to hear about this honestly hilarious beef.
Via MLB.com:
“Unfortunate situation,” Pederson said following the Reds’ 5-1 win. “Kind of stemmed from a fantasy football league we both were in last year. I put a player on the injured reserve when they were listed as out and then added another player. And then there was a text message in the group [chat] saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench.
“Then I looked up the rules and sent a screenshot of the rules, how it says that when a player is ruled out, you’re allowed to put them on the IR. That’s all I was doing. It just so happened that he had a player, Jeff Wilson, who was out. He had him on the IR. I said, ‘You literally have the same thing on your team, on your bench.’ … So it feels very similar to what I did. And that was basically all of it. There’s not much more to it.”
Joc shares details of what happened in his fantasy football league that started his altercation with Tommy Pham today pic.twitter.com/d9NBTwPVoG
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 28, 2022
Anyone who's joined a highly competitive fantasy football league knows playing an imaginary role of a general manager can get you carried away, and that's perhaps all there is in this story involving Pham and Pederson.
Pham was scratched from the Reds' lineup following the incident, and it's possible that either or both him and Pederson will receive a suspension after the league concludes its investigation.
As for baseball matters, Pederson and the Giants will look to bounce back after a 5-1 loss Friday to the Reds.
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