Machado subject of much attention at World Series
BOSTON >> Most players are questioned ahead of their World Series debuts. Manny Machado was crossexamined.
October’s villain is especially despised at Fenway Park for planting his spikes into Dustin Pedroia in April
2017 . The Boston second baseman hasn’t been the same.
“That’s old history,” Machado said Monday, deflector shields raised.
He’s Manny the Masher, Manny the Miscreant and Macho Manny all in one, whacking baseballs, opponents and questions.
Wearing a blue Los Angeles Dodgers World Series hoodie and gray pants, arms crossed, he sat between teammates Yasiel Puig and Ross Stripling, surrounded by a scrum of inquirers in the Pavilion Room on the 106-yearold ballpark’s fourth level. Even with stubble on his chin and lips, Machado’s face looked boyish. His hair was styled into cornrows at the top and a crew cut on the side.
With hard slides at second base against Milwaukee and a foot planted on the heel of Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar , Machado acquired notoriety far exceeding the attention he gained as a fourtime All-Star infielder with Baltimore. He even earned condemnation from Pete Rose, whose own rambunctious play included running over Ray Fosse in an AllStar Game.
“I don’t think going in hard is the same as dragging your left foot, to kicking the guy’s foot off the bag,” Rose said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t know Manny Machado, so I don’t know if he’s a dirty player or if he’s not. But I just thought when he hit the first baseman’s foot it was kind of unnecessary.”
A few weeks from becoming a free agent at the age of 26, Machado’s actions could signal a giant “caveat emptor” sign to suitors, warning them buyer beware.
When he took out Pedroia during a slide at Baltimore on April 21 last year, Machado spiked his surgically repaired left knee and calf. Pedroia missed the next three games and has been limited to 92 games since.
“I know how I hurt my knee and I know what happened. That’s it. We all know,” Pedroia said.
Machado’s response was out of “The Godfather:” business, not personal.
“We’re not friends,” he said.
Because
“That’s a good one, man. That’s a good one. That’s a really good one,” he said, chuckling.
Anger festered. Two days after the slide, Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes threw a fastball behind Machado’s head and was suspended for four games.
When the teams met that May 2, Chris Sale threw a pitch behind Machado’s legs , and Machado criticized the Red Sox during a postgame interview that included 22 profanities in a 75-second span. He called Boston’s behavior “coward stuff” and said “I’ve lost my respect for that organization, for that coaching staff, for everyone over there.”
“We have bigger things to worry about now on both sides,” Sale said ahead of his start in Tuesday night’s opener. “We’re not worried about any individual of what happened? player.”
Machado, as the saying goes, responded with his bat. He homered over the Green Monster and out of Fenway Park later in the series, then took a leisurely
29.8-second stroll around the bases . Machado’s eight homers at Fenway are tied for his most at an opposing ballpark.
“For me to put something over that one, it’s pretty cool,” he said.
Machado drew renewed scrutiny in the NL Championship Series. He failed to run hard on a grounder in Game 2 , then made a pair of hard slides into Milwaukee’s Orlando Arcia in Game 3 while the shortstop was attempting to turn double plays. While Arcia made a wild throw on the second after Machado clipped a knee with a hand, umpires called a double play following a video review.
During an interview broadcast on FS1 before Game 4 , Machado admitted “I’m not the type of player that’s going to be Johnny Hustle and run down the line and slide to first base” and added: “That’s just not my personality. That’s not my cup of tea. That’s not who I am.”
In the 10th inning of that night’s game, he kicked Aguilar on the back of a leg while running out a groundout. He was fined
$10,000 by the commissioner’s office, according to a person familiar with the discipline. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the penalty was not announced.