The Rumble: Padres v. Dodgers

Raise your hand if you've failed at blogging lately... [Marty raises her hand.] I usually try to get 2 posts in a week but holy moly life has been a little crazy lately! 

There are 4 more weeks left of school and it's graduation time! This means that I'm about knee deep in papers, presentations, and exams. Also, baseball season started and I'm obsessed with all the action happening with that. Finally, 2 of the CLAMS have their birthdays this month and the way it works with us it's usually a birthweek/weekend celebration so I have to make sure to get stuff done so I can accomodate the celebrations without forfeiting much school work. Oh, and I finally got back on my health kick, time to drop some weight! Which means waking up and exercising before the sun comes out since that's the only "free" (meh, who cares about sleep) time I have! BLAH. As crazy as things are, I wouldn't have it any other way. Life is good.

You know whose life isn't so good? Zach Greinke of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Dude's collarbone was broken after getting into a fight with Carlos Quentin of the Padres.

In my 24.66 years of baseball fandom and regularly attending games, I have never ever seen a bench clearing fight and I was at the game last week when the brawl and injury happened!

My BFFs and I have season tickets to the Padres and our next game to catch after opening day was Thursday April 11th which was another Dodgers game! Playing against them is always fun because there's a huge rivalry between the teams and the fans.  

We got to our seats Thursday night which are in left center field, closest to the center fielder. My friends and I have this thing we like to do and that's yelling at the (away) teams center fielder that their shoe is untied (even if it's not) to get a peek at their bootaaaaay. Why? 

Alex Rodriguez and I share the same sentiment. 

Baseball pants make butts look good. Real good.

I shouted at Matt Kemp to "tie his shoe" and to my surprise, he obliged! Kind of. He just bent over real quick and touched his toe and popped back up. Better than nothing I guess!

Matt Kemp on the left.

There were some Padres fans heckling Matt real hard. He was getting pretty annoyed with it and doing hand gestures back to the fans and kept looking back at them between pitches. 

Even doing the same thing as Tony Gwynn Jr. below

I was already pretty excited because I've never seen a ballplayer react to hecklers like this...ever and it was sort of making my night.

THEN...this happened:

View of the brawl from my seat.

I. Lost. My. Mind. Lost it. I couldn't believe I was witnessing a bench clearing brawl! As crappy as the situation was, it was SO exciting to see! After like 5 or 10 minutes of "fighting" everyone cleared out and went to their corners, the pitchers walked back to their respective bullpens which is where our seats are. Good thing I was recording on my phone! As they made their way back and through the door up to the bullpen, one (Dodgers) fan was heckling the Padres pitchers and Luke Gregerson took it super personal and was calling out the fan, check it out:

Right before shit gets real between Gregerson and the other fan, ANOTHER FIGHT BREAKS OUT. OMFG! I couldn't keep my cool. I was too excited. I never thought I'd see the day where this happened. Hahaha. After the second "fight" happened the guys were too pumped to go chill out on their bench. They all stood by the fence ready incase another one happened. No such luck.

The internet and sports media was a buzz all that night and the day after over the fight. Apparently Greinke and Quentin have this history and Quentin thought he was hit on purpose. He took a couple of steps towards Greinke and Greinke said something that caused Carlos to charge the mound which started the first brawl. Once they cleared out Jerry Hairston Jr. (a former Padre) heard some of the Padres (who he will not name. Voldemort?) making fun of Greinke's injury and he got pissed and ran to their dugout to call them out on it. Shit went down again and another brawl sort of happened. At the end of it Quentin, Greinke, Hairston Jr. and Kemp were all ejected from the game. Matt Kemp got in Quentin's face in the parking garage talking crap ending it with "We'll see bitch" while being broken up by Clayton Richards and some coppers. We'll see is right. Padres hit up LA Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week and SWEPT them! Whoop whoop. I'm excited for the next Padres/Dodgers series I get to go to at Petco :]