August Baseball Game Briefly Spiced Up By Runaway Dugout Red-Assedness

The Arizona Diamondbacks are angry at Quintin Berry, third base coach for the Chicago Cubs. Several Diamondbacks, including manager Torey Lovullo, suspected Monday night that Berry was picking up the changeup grip of Diamondbacks starting pitcher Merrill Kelly and then using not-subtle-enough hand gestures to ping information to Cubs hitters, relayed through a runner on second base. This matter came to a head in the fifth inning, with Michael Busch facing a full count at the plate and Seiya Suzuki on second base following a double off the wall in left. Berry did something with his left hand and Kelly stepped off the rubber and glared at him. Diamondbacks bench coach Jeff Banister, who has a terrific old worn-out baseball face, first lit into Berry, and then pitching coach Brian Kaplan shouted across the diamond to Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty, and then the two dugouts woofed back and forth and exchanged theatrical finger wags.

Pitch-tipping is regarded as largely the problem of a sloppy pitcher, and exploiting it is well within the bounds of acceptable gamesmanship. The Diamondbacks do not disagree. What they apparently object to, as Kelly explained after the game, is when a coach gets involved in the action. The way Kelly sees it, he is a player competing against other players, and if those players pick up on his grips and kick his ass, that’s just how it goes. But he is less cool with the involvement of some middle-aged bozo from over on the other side of the base line. Kelly makes a reasonable case.