Phillies manager Buck Sawyer to his team calling for retaliation
“Men,” he began, “you know I’m old school, and I’m proud of it. There are certain basic rules that still remain a part of baseball. One of them is that you gotta protect your own if they’re thrown at, or when somebody takes out one of us on a dirty play. We have to play hardball, and that means playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played. We need to respect each other enough so that we do what is necessary to protect our baseball family.
We lost our all-star second baseman for several weeks because of a purpose pitch that was thrown without any provocation from us. Today, we blew an opportunity to respond in kind with Wynne at the plate. Sometimes paybacks are a bitch, but we must send the Mets a message that we aren’t going to turn the other cheek. I want to read a line from Joe Garagiola’s book, Baseball is a Funny Game.
Garagiola said, ‘Baseball is a game played by human beings and governed by unwritten laws of survival and self-preservation