Aside from a pair of doubles from Justin Turner, their only hits of the night, the Los Angeles Dodgers were trudging their way to another loss at the hands of the rival San Francisco Giants. It would represent a fifth overall loss for Los Angeles.
Then, with two outs in the seventh inning, a seemingly innocent foul ball lit a fuse at Dodger Stadium. Yasiel Puig was upset with himself for what he believed was a missed opportunity.
Giants catcher Nick Hundley apparently took exception, and came up from his crouch to exchange words with Puig. Hundley was then shoved, and it sparked a benches-clearing brawl.
Puig explained his point of view, and astutely noted the Giants and Dodgers have a recent history of only getting into dustups at Dodger Stadium, per Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times:
“He told me to stop complaining and get back in the box,” Puig said. “When I got in his face, he told me to get out of his face, so that’s when I got upset with him.
“I didn’t like that he was telling me what to do, and then he said some words to me in English that I really can’t repeat.”
“It doesn’t happen with other teams,” Puig said through an interpreter, “and it doesn’t seem to happen when we’re in San Francisco. … I’m not going to let them act like that in our house.”
Historically, it’s been Puig and Madison Bumgarner mixing it up. To their credit, they got through Monday’s series opener without issue. Even when Puig yelled out of frustration at first base after a fly ball.
The incident didn’t net an immediate result for the Dodgers but they did tie the game in the eighth inning behind Turner’s third double of the night and Manny Machado’s RBI single. However, Kenta Maeda allowed San Francisco to push the winning run across in the top of the ninth.
