Yankees Brawl: Joe Girardi at Fault

Not a good start for the new Joe.

I'm a huge Yankees fan, and yet I will be the first one to tell you New York is at fault in the recent brawl with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Manager Joe Girardi's comments following the Rays' Elliot Johnson's collision with Yankees' catcher Francisco Cervelli last Saturday set off this entire string of events.

"It's just disheartening. It's spring training, I just don't understand," Girardi was quoted as saying.

It's unusual for a hard-nosed catcher like Girardi to be upset over a clean play like Johnson running into Cervelli. Even former Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer, who says Girardi is like a son to him, found the reaction odd.

"I can't believe that he went after it the way he did," said Zimmer, who is now a senior adviser with Tampa Bay. "That's not Joe Girardi."

New York's Shelley Duncan then responded on Wednesday by spiking Tampa Bay's Akinori Iwamuri during a slide into second base. That was not a clean play.

I don't blame the loyal Duncan, who appeared to be caught up in his manager's unfounded anger and believed he was simply coming to the defense of his fallen comrade Cervelli.

"What matters to me the most is the respect of my coaching staff and my teammates," Duncan said following the play that Rays' manager Joe Maddon called "borderline criminal."

Duncan's hard slide led to a brawl, which will probably lead to a regular season suspension for the outfielder and maybe others. And the bad blood looks like it will continue into the 19 games the Yanks and Rays play between April and September.

I was extremely pleased when the laid back, out-of-touch Joe Torre was finally replaced by the more hands-on Joe Girardi, but the new skipper certainly overreacted on this one.

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