Boston Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon was talking smack Wednesday night and clearly indicated that the Red Sox don’t believe their differences with the Tampa Bay Rays are a thing of the past. I’m really not certain why Papelbon is running his mouth at this point in the season, especially when he’ll likely be facing the Ray’s offense several more times during the year. Perhaps Red Sox manager Terry Francona needs to carry a roll of duct tape for Papelbon and use it to keep him from instigating the Rays.

Tempers flared between the Rays and Red Sox last week after Boston outfielder Coco Crisp made a hard slide into second baseman Akinori Iwamura. The following night, Coco Crisp was hit in the right hip by pitcher James Shields in the second inning. Crisp rushed the mound to confront Shields, ducked a wild right by Shields and mayhem ensued.

Papelbon was quoted as saying, “In my opinion, it is a bunch of bull what they did,” in reference to the incedent between Crisp and Shields that turned into a brawl. All I got to say is what comes around goes around, man.”

Later in the show Papelbon added,, “In my opinion, and the way I feel right now, this thing isn’t all settled and done, we still got to play them a few more times and I know when we go into Tropicana things will be a little different than when went in there last time.”

Major League Baseball issued the Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays eight suspensions totaling 38 games for the incident. The video of Coco Crisp charging the mound and the ensuing melee that followed is shown below for those of you haven’t already seen it.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Rays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.