DISCLAIMER: This is not an actual problem I have with the Giants. Well, I guess it is. Really, what I mean to say is that this isn’t an issue I think will impact the Giants’ ability to win games. The Giants clearly have been having no trouble with that. No, this is something different.
The Giants and Padres play one another six more times this regular season, and that’s not counting the game going on right now. It’s a tense time. One team’s fighting to stay ahead of its hated rival and win the division. The other’s fighting to not completely underwhelm enormous expectations and make the playoff field. There are emotions here. And with the Padres being a rather demonstrative lot, it sure seems like the opportunity could be there for some bad blood to emerge, and in the scenario in which the two meet in the Wild Card Game—somewhere around one-in-four likely or better, I’m told—getting in a legitimate fight in the playoffs.
If the Giants weren’t so nice.
Now, to be fair, I haven’t watched a lot of the Giants this year. Maybe they aren’t as nice as they seem. But Brandon Belt? Seems kind of nice. Brandon Crawford? Seems rather nice. Kris Bryant? Obscenely nice. Yes, there’s the possibility Manny Machado bumps Buster Posey wrong coming in to score, but even then, I feel like the Giants would just look at him in a way that makes him feel bad for what he did. Or do that thing where they turn inward, achieve more spiritual wholeness, and strike him out twice somehow in his next trip to the plate. I just can’t see these Giants getting in a fight.
But maybe I’m wrong.
Hopefully I’m wrong.
I still think Bryant could throw some haymakers.
Looks like the Padres were so frustrated over the Giants’ not wanting to mix-it-up that they got into a tussle with one another in their own dugout once they got to St. Louis. https://www.mlb.com/news/fernando-tatis-jr-manny-machado-dugout-confrontation
Maybe Gabe Kapler’s a hypnotist and planted the seeds.