The Rockies and Dodgers played a five-hour, twenty-three minute, 16-inning marathon of a game last night in which most men of fighting age west of the Mississippi were deployed at some point. Really: they combined to use 58 players, 24 of which were pitchers, both of which were MLB records for a single game. There was a pitcher playing the outfield at one point in this bad boy.
And while the game was won by a dramatic Nolan Arenado home run in the top of the 16th, it was a slide hours earlier which had most people talking afterward.
In the bottom of the fourth inning the Rockies had a 3-1 and Adrian Gonzalez was at bat with Justin Turner on first. The infield was shifted for Gonzalez, which put Arenado at shortstop, basically. Gonzalez hit a comebacker to the mound and the pitcher tossed to Arenado to start the double play. Arenado made the play, but not without being knocked over by Turner’s slide over the bag:
[mlbvideo id="483127183" width="600" height="336" /]
Not a dirty slide, at least not in the sense that Turner was way wide of the bag or anything like you sometimes see. It was a lot later of a slide than one tends to see, however, and was clearly calculated to break up the double play. Which, generally speaking, is considered clean if you’re a teammate or fan of the slider and considered something-less-than-jake if you’re a teammate of fan of the guy getting knocked down. We’ve been playing baseball for a century and a half so far and “playing hard” vs. “playing dirty” is one of those many things no one has definitively decided yet, particularly in cases like this one.
In any event, the slide led Arenado and Rockies manager Walt Weiss to jaw at Turner after the inning was over and Turner to jaw at Arenado once the fifth inning began. After the game Arenado didn’t really talk about it -- he had that dramatic 16th inning homer to talk about -- but Weiss said he thought the slide was late.
As for that homer:
[mlbvideo id="483190783" width="600" height="336" /]