Since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd weight in on the whole Rays / Yankees "feud" that's been going on lately.

For those of you who are not aware, on Saturday, near the end of the game, there was a play at home plate. The Yankees catcher mostly blocked the plate, and the Rays runner essentially ran over him to try to score. Unfortunately, the collision broke the catcher's wrist which will certainly be a major blow to a promising career.

A war of words erupted after this, with the Yankees manager claiming that it's not appropriate to run over the catcher in a spring training game, and the Rays asserting that they were both just playing hard, trying to impress their organizations. Although I am admittedly biased in this fight, the fact is that reasonable people can disagree about how serious of an issue this was, or if it was an issue at all. It's unfortunate that the catcher broke his wrist, however, had this happened in a regular season game, there would be no complaints.

The Yankees and the Rays played again on Wednesday and tensions were high. Both teams were warned before the game that the umpires wouldn't be putting up with any misconduct, and they meant it. In the first inning, the Yankees pitcher hit a Rays player with a pitch and was immediately ejected. Most accounts believe that this was an accident, and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. The situation was very unusual for an intentional hit batter and it was a minor leaguer without major league control on the mound.

Things changed in the second inning. Shelley Duncan, trying to stretch an error single into a double was thrown out at second by quite a ways, so, he went into the base with his spikes up, catching 2B Iwamura in the thigh. Sliding into a base like this has been considered dirty and dangerous for as long as players have actually worn spikes. Even die-hard Yankee fans are admitting that this crossed a line. The benches cleared, a typical baseball brawl ensued (people shoving, throwing and missing punches, yelling at each other, etc) and some ejections were handed out.

In short -- the Rays play on Saturday was a play that is made with regularity during the regular season. It's questionable whether or not it should have happened during spring training, and it's certainly unfortunate that someone got injured. The Yankees play on Wednesday was simply dirty and would not be acceptable during spring training, during the regular season, or during game 7 of the World Series. There's no place for it and we're just lucky that Iwamura wasn't injured.