Yankees' CC Sabathia continues feud with Rays, resulting in both benches clearing
Sabathia's beef with the Rays dates back to last season
•
1 min read
There are some things in life you can count on. One of those things is New York Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia finding a way to get into it with the Tampa Bay Rays. Sabathia's feud with the Rays dates to last year, and continued on Tuesday, as part of New York's come-from-behind victory against Tampa Bay in Game 2 of their four-game set.
After fanning Avisail Garcia in the sixth inning, Sabathia stared him down. Eventually, the two traded words and the benches cleared. No punches or kicks or folding chairs were thrown, and order was restored in due time. You can watch the entire sequence here:
Good ol' CC Sabathia, keeping his cool as usual against the @RaysBaseball 🙄🙄 pic.twitter.com/W4JudCLyKl
— FOX Sports Sun: Rays (@FOXSportsRays) July 17, 2019
After the game, both sides shared some insight into what happened:
Sabathia said this was a misunderstanding. He was pumping himself up by talking to himself, as he has done before, and he said Garcia took it personally. Although he did admit there’s no love lost between the teams.
— James Wagner (@ByJamesWagner) July 17, 2019
After his bench-clearing thing with CC Sabathia, Tampa Bay's Avisail Garcia said that he didn't say anything to provoke it. "He got mad for no reason," he said. "I respect him. Good competitor. And nothing happened, so that’s it. ... I’m that guy. I don’t like problems."
— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) July 17, 2019
Sabathia's beef with Tampa Bay dates to last season. In his final regular-season start, he took exception to Austin Romine being brushed back by a pitch behind his head and retaliated by drilling a Tampa Bay player. He then made some adult gestures toward the Rays dugout after he was ejected from the game. Earlier this year, Sabathia intentionally threw at Austin Meadows -- he was caught on camera seemingly admitting as much -- but was not ejected for that incident.
Sabathia, as everyone knows, is retiring at season's end. We're not being hyperbolic when we state that he's likely to hold his grudge against the Rays for the rest of his career.
