Subscribe
Follow Us
Rivalries are fantastic for sports. Red Sox-Yankees, Duke-North Carolina, Celtics-Lakers, the list goes on. A rather new entry has entered the fold in recent years and is quickly becoming among the most heated rivalries in North American sports.
The San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers do not like each other. Their matchups have become appointment television.
The NL West rivals traded jabs in a thrilling Game 1 of their NL Division Series with the Dodgers pulling out the win. Twenty-four hours later, the Padres closed a 10-2 rout at Dodger Stadium to even the series. Unfortunately, the biggest stories of the game have nothing to do with the action itself.
Multiple incidents unfolded in Los Angeles Sunday night, the most troubling being a 10-minute delay in the seventh inning as Dodger fans threw objects on the field. Some were directed at Padres players, particularly outfielders Jurickson Profar and Fernando Tatis Jr.
The Padres were not pleased with how things unfolded. They're not sure they want to return to Chavez Ravine for another playoff game or that a game in that atmosphere should be allowed.
“If I was the commissioner of baseball, I wouldn’t even allow a Game 5 at their place,’’ Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada said, per Bob Nightengale. “I mean, why? Why would you want to test that to happen again?
“That’s hard to control people. Something’s going to happen.’’
Moving a potential Game 5 to a neutral site or limiting the capacity would be an extreme move by Major League Baseball. It won’t happen, but it's valid for the Padres to have safety concerns for their next trip to Los Angeles after what unfolded Sunday.
Dodgers-Padres tensions taking away from epic series
It wouldn’t be the MLB playoffs without some chirping and aggressiveness toward the opposition, especially in a series with division rivals who've met recently in the postseason. A series that's turning into an instant classic is becoming a sideshow to the growing animosity between the two franchises.
Both teams, rightfully so, condemned the fans' actions for throwing stuff on the field. That's about the only thing they've agreed on.
The Dodgers have taken offense to how Manny Machado threw a ball toward their dugout before the fans got involved. That has become a bigger topic of conversation among the teams rather than the fan incident.
Still, there is no room for any of this in sports, and hopefully a similar situation can be avoided with the Padres' crowd as the series shifts to San Diego. For what it's worth, the Padres handled themselves fairly well in a hostile environment.
“I get the whole rivalry stuff, but there’s no rivalry that should be taken that seriously. When it comes to health hazards of throwing objects at us, that’s not good. At the end of the day, it’s just freaking baseball. You guys are ruining the legacy of Dodger Stadium by throwing beer cans at us. You don’t want us throwing something at you. We wouldn’t miss” Estrada said.
“We know we couldn’t do anything, but we retaliated by taking it out on them on the field. That’s the way we handled it. Ok, you want to show us, we’ll show you.’’
The Padres stuck it to the Dodgers, and now have a chance to end the series – and Los Angeles' season – with a pair of wins at Petco Park.
