NEW YORK -- Boston Red Sox reliever Julian
Tavarez was suspended for 10 days and fined Thursday for his
role in a brawl this week.
Bob Watson, baseball's vice president in charge of discipline, cited
Tavarez for "violent and unsportsmanlike actions" during Monday's game
against the Devil Rays. Tavarez punched Tampa Bay's Joey
Gathright lightly on the jaw after a play at home plate.
The penalty would start next Monday, when Boston plays its season
opener, unless the players' association appeals.
"I'm a little surprised," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said in Fort
Myers, Fla. "I know they didn't have video so I'm not sure what they're
going on. ... It seems like a lot."
Boston general manager Theo Epstein said he didn't know if the
suspension would be appealed.
Tavarez is with his seventh team in eight years and has been suspended
four times, starting in May 1996 when he threw a pitch behind
Milwaukee's Mike Matheny, sparking a
brawl. Tavarez was suspended for three games.
He was suspended for five games and fined $1,000 after a spring training
melee in 2001 when San Francisco's Russ Davis charged the mound after
striking out because he thought Tavarez, then with the Chicago Cubs, had
shown him up.
Tavarez was fined $10,000 by the commissioner's office in October 2004
for throwing a pitch over the head of Houston's Jeff
Bagwell in Game 4 of the NL championship series. Earlier that
season, he was suspended for eight days for applying a foreign substance
to balls while pitching.
Francona thinks Tavarez's history probably was a factor in the length of
the suspension.
"It sure seems like it because that's a pretty stiff penalty," Francona
said.
