RIVALRY PUT ON FULL BLAST

Bellinger’s HR steal brings out emotions on both sides of field

As Cody Bellinger brought Fernando Tatis Jr.’s would-be, go-ahead home run back onto Globe Life Field’s playing surface in the seventh inning Wednesday night, Brusdar Graterol tossed his hat and glove into the air. You didn’t have to major in lip-reading to know that Manny Machado — one of several bat-flippers in a Padres lineup full of swag — did not care for theatrics that concluded with the Dodgers reliever blowing him a kiss.

Three times, Machado yelled “(Expletive) you!” across the diamond before telling Graterol, “I’ll be waiting for you,” as the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts and Max Muncy waved him off the field. Hypocritical? Some certainly believe so.

Good for the game? You bet, said Trent Grisham, a focal point of tensions between the two teams last month at Petco Park when he chirped right back at a dugout irked that he admired a dramatic, game-tying home run off Clayton Kershaw.

“Without a doubt,” Grisham said. “The passion, the intensity. I’m sure when kids are watching on TV, they’re loving it. When I watched big-league games on TV, I loved to see stuff like that. It’s fun. It’s part of what makes you want to play bigleague baseball.”

The Padres have certainly been no strangers in that department this year, beginning with Tatis staring intently in the Padres’ dugout as he walked up the baseline after a monstrous home run against the Dodgers at Petco Park in August.

Their bat-flipping ways became a national conversation last week when Tatis and Machado celebrated back-to-back home runs in a come-from-behind Game 2 win over the Cardinals. Tatis added another and Wil Myers bat-flipped twice as the Padres advanced past the first round of a postseason for the first time since 1998.

That, Grisham said, was precisely on Machado’s mind during a particularly emphatic bat throw toward the Padres’ dugout after his sixth-inning homer off Kershaw.

It was, as they say, not safe for work, let alone a primetime audience: “Let’s (expletive) go!”

Eric Hosmer followed with his own solo shot to bring the Padres to within a run.

“Manny’s trying to get our team fired up,” Grisham said. “I’m sure Graterol is trying to get his team fired up. They were fired up. I mean, it was a good play. It was a great play. That’s just part of it when you get rivals together, playing against each other in high-pressure situations. Emotions come out. … Everybody’s blood boils and people don’t like it.

“At the end of the day, we’re here to try to help our team win. Manny tried to fire us up. Then they were fired up by a very, very good play.”

That, Betts said Wednesday night, was the point the Dodgers were trying to make while shooing Machado off the field during his expletive-laced outburst.

“I just feel like, when he hit his home run, he threw the bat and this, that and the other,” Betts said. “Then when we take one away, we can celebrate, too. It’s got to be two sides to it. That was just what I was saying.”

Yet none of the Dodgers were saying the same sorts of things when Grisham slow-rolled his home run trot at Petco Park last month. Instead, the team that trolled Madison Bumgarner with “Go get it out of the ocean” T-shirts saw Dodgers manager Dave Roberts declare “there’s a certain respect you give a guy if you homer against him.”

The Dodgers didn’t like Grisham’s antics. Machado didn’t care for Graterol’s theatrics. Then the Dodgers laughed off what they called Machado’s hypocrisy with some of their own.

It’s this sort of stuff that could elevate this budding rivalry, especially if they continue to meet consistently in meaningful games.

And both sides agree that’s good for the game.

“That’s high-level situations, lot of energy, lot of excitement,” Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager said Thursday. “… It’s emotional. These games are emotional. You have to be up for the challenge, be ready for the task, and we were last night.”

Added Grisham: “It’s just fun, really. It’s fun to play in a very competitive environment with a team we’re trying to beat really badly. I’m sure over there, they want to beat us more than anything else. It just makes it fun.

“... We’re competitors. That’s what we like to do. To do it one of the biggest stages is, like I said, a lot of fun.”

jeff.sanders@sduniontribune.com