Vicente Padilla and Mark Teixeira don’t like each other. Oil and vinegar. Simple as that. And on Saturday, their over-seven-year spat reached a new level when Padilla publicly questioned Teixiera’s manhood.
“In this sport, as competitive ball players, we get pretty fired up,” Padilla said in a Spanish-language interview translated by NESN, “So I think, maybe, [Teixeira] picked the wrong profession. I think he’d be better off playing a women’s sport.”
Trite as it was, we still enjoy his intent. The remark was in response to comments Teixeira made the night before following the Yankees’ 10-8 win over the Red Sox, a game in which Teixeira drove in the deciding runs with a triple off Padilla in the seventh.
“The guy throws at people, fact of the matter,” Teixeira said, according to ESPN New York. “I’m not saying anything that is news. It is what it is. I’ve always been someone who wants to play the game the right way. You play hard, but you don’t play cheap. I’ve always lived that way, too. Some guys decide to take matters into their own hands. In the NFL, he would probably be suspended by Roger Goodell eight games or a whole season. This is baseball.”
Before their little tiff reached this totally sexist and Roger Goodell-slurping apex, it began in 2005 when Padilla, then with the Phillies, beaned Teixeira after he homered off the pitcher. Their beef persisted even while they were teammates on the Rangers in 2006 and 2007.
“The problem is he talks about all the wrong things that others have done, but the things he’s done — against the Latinos [on the Rangers] — he doesn’t open his mouth about,” Padilla went on. “He once threatened me and said he was going to hit me with a bat, and that’s when we were playing on the same team.”
Of course, this latest dust-up wouldn’t have arisen if master provocateur Bobby Valentine didn’t troll Teixeira by lifting hard-throwing Andrew Miller to have Padilla face him on Friday. Go figure.
H/T Jimmy Traina
Photo: Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE
