Life In The Cell

The JD-OC Disagreement

I’m not going to do a recap, I’ll link to one or two in “A Walk Around the Bases” tomorrow, but I do want to touch upon one thing.

A weird dustup happened between Orlando Cabrera and potential All-Star Jermaine Dye (vote early, vote often!). In the 8th inning, with Cabrera on second and JD up with 1 strike and 1 out, OC stole third. He had a huge lead and got in without a throw, but in the process, it seems that he messed up JD’s concentration as he swung at a bad pitch down and away. JD proceeded to glare at OC after the pitch, either that or he was just really intensely looking at Cox, I’m leaning toward the former. Anyway, JD struck out and OC came in to score after the Royals reliever balked while facing Paul Konerko. In the long run it ended up being real good that OC stole third, as it provided the winning margin. In the short run, it was ALSO smart. It’s better to have a man on third and two strikes vs a man on second with one strike. It’s just unfortunate JD couldn’t get the job done.

After OC scored and gave some high fives, the camera panned to him and he was clearly agitated. He was gesticulating wildly and yelling about something. Dewayne Wise had to position himself in front of him to prevent OC from going anywhere. I didn’t immediately connect the dots until Cheat mention JD during the gamethread, and it was clear then that JD had some words for Orlando upon his return to the dugout. Words that were sharper than, “Good job hustling and stealing that base” or “Shit! We’re in the lead, baby!”

I realize things get heated in sports and arguments happen, but it seems like such a weird thing to argue over when the end result was something good. My initial thought was that maybe JD has a clause in his contract where he makes more money by making the All-Star team, but unfortunately Cot’s as well as MLB4u don’t mention anything; they don’t mention any clauses so it’s still a possibility. If there is no such clause, I can’t think of what the big deal was. There’s a chance (and please don’t take this and run with it as a truth, this is IDLE SPECULATION) that there’s something between OC and JD. I’m not saying this with any sort of proof just throwing it out there. Hopefully, it was just a minor squabble and we’ll never have to hear about it again. Maybe we can bring it up the next time these two high five and all have a good laugh about how silly this all was.