Johnny On The Spot

Even though his team is playing more than 1200 miles away in Texas, I'd be willing to bet if there's a brawl in tonight's Orioles/Blue Jays game in Toronto, Jonny Gomes will find a way to be in it. After all, he manages to be a part of every other fight.

He's #31 in the picture above, pounding on Coco Crisp, who charged the mound after being plunked by James Shields, who hit Crisp because Crisp (in the minds of most members of the Rays) slid in too hard on Akinori Iwamura in Wednesday night's game, who is coincidentally the same guy victimized by a hard slide in spring training by New York Yankee Shelly Duncan, a slide which prompted another brawl, which also featured Gomes (got all that?).

After hearing about the brawl in the car last night, my initial reaction was that the Rays (in a Teddy KGB voice from the movie "Rounders") "von't be pooshed a-round" anymore...that their newfound aggressiveness and penchant for fisticuffs are somehow derived from a decade of doormat-dom. Turns out, I'm right. Quoting Shields, "We've been getting stomped around the last 10 years and it isn't going to happen anymore."

Jonny Gomes will probably try to sucker-punch me for saying this but Shields wasn't on the 63-99 Tampa team from 1998 (led by Fred McGriff and Rolando Arrojo). He was a 16-year-old attending Hart High School in Santa Clarita, Calirfornia, where he was most likely not a Rays fan.