So Coco started off the second inning of tonight's game by picking a fight with the Rays pitcher. After being hit by the second pitch he saw, Coco charged the mound. Watching Coco it seemed pretty clear that he probably spent some time in the gym with his dad (why you would throw a punch at someone who's father had been a boxer is beyond me. I suppose he might not have known.)
Shields threw a weirdo, over-the-top, lazy, probably pretty ineffective (had it landed) punch, which Coco bobbed-I'm going to guess that Shields doesn't have all that much experience throwing a punch, especially given the fact that he used his pitching hand. Coco answered with an ill-placed roundhouse that seemed to clip Shields' shoulder. The catcher (Navarro) tackled him and then a couple of extraneous Rays jumped on top (Crawford, Gomes, and Iwamura) and started pummeling him.
To hear Coco tell it, however, they were fighting like "little girls", scratching at him and pulling his hair. From his post-game interview, he seemed to find the whole thing very amusing; which leads me to believe that he's been in some real fights in his time. He's always struck me as more deserving of the "scrappy" descriptor than Pedroia, anyway. Every time he comes up to bat he looks like a five-year-old ruffian. If you take away his toys, he's going to come at you fists flying; even if you put your hand on his forehead to keep him back, he'll keep trying to land a punch.
In all likelihood, he's looking at a ten-game suspension. As much as I love Coco, it wouldn't have been too horrible. But then the fourth inning happened.
In the fourth inning, Ellsbury made a beautiful diving catch to get the first out. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so he seemed to roll his wrist over. They did x-rays to determine that nothing was broken. It was announced as a sprained wrist but all that means is that it hurts like a sonofabitch but nothing appeared to be structurally wrong with it. They intend to do more testing tomorrow to figure out what exactly is wrong.
And then the weirdest thing happened between the fourth and the fifth innings. In the dugout, Manny took a swipe at Youk. Youkilis seemed absolutely utterly, confused by the whole incident. No indication from anyone what it was about, with Francona only saying in his presser that it had been taken care of. Indeed, when Manny came out of the game in the seventh, he and Youkilis shared a fist-bump.
The last unpleasant moment of the evening came in the seventh inning. Manny was the first to bat in the Sox half of the inning and watched most of the pitches thrown at him sail by. After one of those pitches sailed by, he shook out his right leg and Francona came jogging over. They left him in the game until he had drawn a walk but perhaps his hamstring is worse than they've let on. Anyway, Cash ran for Manny and really looked adorably perplexed that he was being asked to DH.
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