The Red Sox and Orioles spent Friday night locked in a tight, low-scoring game, but the temperature spiked in the eighth inning after a hard slide at second base sent both benches and bullpens pouring onto the field.
It started when Luis Robert Jr. rolled into an inning-ending double play with Blaze Alexander on first. Trevor Story handled the ball at short and moved it to Nick Sogard at second, and Sogard finished the play by throwing to Mickey Gasper at first.
Alexander slid aggressively into the bag and kept going past it. He didn’t appear to hit Sogard, but the Boston infielder glanced back at him after the turn, and that was enough to ignite the argument.
“I thought, clean slide into the bag, and just getting stared at,” Alexander told reporters after the game. “Wanted to know why I’m getting stared at. And yeah, that’s really it.”
NESN video showed Alexander jawing with Sogard before Story and several other players jumped into the fray. In a matter of seconds, the dugouts emptied on both sides.
Sogard said he had no issue with the slide itself. His reaction, he explained, was tied to where Alexander ended up after the play.
“He slid in pretty hard,” Sogard told reporters. “I didn’t have a problem with his slide, but we turned the double play.
I was just looking back to see how far he went. I don’t know if he liked me looking back.
But that was pretty much it.”
The scene never went beyond shouting and shoving. No one was ejected, though umpires did hand out warnings to both clubs.
Once things settled, Alexander tried to turn the moment into a spark for Baltimore. As players headed back to their dugouts, he motioned to the crowd and urged the Orioles fans to get louder.
The Orioles still had a shot in the ninth, trailing by one with Aroldis Chapman on the mound trying to close it out for Boston. Alexander later explained the point of the gesture.
“Obviously, Chapman is coming in,” Alexander said. “Get the crowd going a little bit.
You never know. You score two there, we win, and it looks real good.”
It never got there for Baltimore. Chapman got Pete Alonso and Gunnar Henderson, then Christian Encarnacion-Strand lined out to Story to end it. The save was the 399th of Chapman’s career.
Boston’s 1-0 win came together through Mickey Gasper’s solo homer in the first, seven shutout innings from Ranger Suárez, and a clean eighth from Garrett Whitlock, who kept the lead intact before the double-play drama. The victory moved the Red Sox to 77-65 and gave them two straight wins to open the four-game series, while Baltimore dropped its fourth in a row.
The confrontation was over by the time the teams left the field, but it left its mark on a series that still has two games to go. Alexander said the Orioles would be ready on Saturday. Boston, after getting the last word on the scoreboard, will be ready too.
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