This weekend series between the Cincinnati Reds and San Francisco Giants has given the baseball world one of the weirder altercations we’ve ever seen on an MLB field. The story continues to get stranger by the day.
On Friday, benches cleared before the game when the Reds’ Tommy Pham slapped the Giants’ Joc Pederson in the face after a brief discussion in the outfield. Pederson didn’t retaliate, and Pham was removed from the lineup before getting hit with a three-game suspension.
It turned out that the entire confrontation stemmed from a fantasy football dispute about bench-IR etiquette. And on top of that, Pham really took exception to a GIF that Pederson sent mocking the Padres’ collapse back in September. Pham was so upset about the GIF that he slapped Pederson over it eight months later.
