Larry Brown Sports

The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres brought us our first bench-clearing brawl of the season on Thursday night, and things got very ugly. Zack Greinke suffered a broken collarbone after standing up to Carlos Quentin, who charged the mound when he was hit by a pitch in the sixth inning.

Thursday was the third time Greinke has hit Quentin in their careers, but Carlos was also hit a league-leading 17 times last season. It remains to be seen if the melee will spark a rivalry between the two teams throughout the course of the season, but the Dodgers official Twitter account did their part to stoke the fire after the game had ended.

See you on Monday in Los Angeles: twitter.com/Dodgers/status…

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 12, 2013

The confrontation reportedly continued after the game when Matt Kemp had some words for Quentin outside the locker rooms, which led to a number of fantastic memes. Between the Dodgers “Anchorman” tweet and all the entertaining memes, this has turned out to be a fun mess to follow. If only Greinke didn’t have to pay such a major price.

H/T SI Hot Clicks

Carlos Quentin charged the mound after being hit by a pitch from Zack Greinke, inciting a bench-clearing brawl between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres on Thursday night.

Greinke had a full count on Quentin with the bases empty and the Dodgers leading 2-1 in the sixth when he plunked the Padres outfielder in the left arm. Quentin stared out at Greinke, took a few steps towards the mound, and then decided to charge. Greinke dropped his glove, braced for the contact, and dropped his left shoulder into the charging outfielder. Catcher A.J. Ellis rushed out and tackled Quentin to the ground, and then it was “every man for himself” after that, as announcer Vin Scully said.

Greinke was replaced by pitcher Chris Capuano after suffering an injury, which was later revealed to be a broken collarbone. Center fielder Matt Kemp was ejected for going crazy during the brawl, and he was replaced by Skip Schumaker.

Kemp was likely fuming because he felt the Padres had thrown at him earlier in the game:

Read The Rest of the Story…

It’s a shame the Padres are 22nd in the MLB in average attendance. Obviously the fans don’t know what they’re missing. Adrian Gonzalez and Heath Bell may be gone, but clearly the Padres did a great job this offseason in acquiring elite foul ball shaggers. As you can see from the video above, the Padres ball girl reached over the wall to make a great catch on a line-drive foul ball on Wednesday.

The good news is the catch prevented the young lady from getting a sunflower seed shower like some others in her field have had to deal with this season. But did the Padres announcer really say “hubba hubba” when she made the catch? I honestly don’t even have anything to say about that.

Being a baseball GM as of late has become something of a merry-go-round ride. Still in the thick of the World Series, MLB is getting dizzy with management changes within big-name ball clubs.

The official announcement came Friday night: Theo Epstein is leaving the Red Sox to become the Cubs’ president. That was the first domino.

With a big hole to fill, Boston quickly slotted assistant GM Ben Cherington into Epstein’s former seat. Both teams will hold press conferences on Tuesday, the next off day in the World Series, to present their new bosses.

Another domino fell when Epstein decided to poach long-time friend (and former Red Sox assistant) Jed Hoyer, the Padres’ GM, and bring him into the fold. This would be Epstein’s first move as President since he managed to swing a deal where Hoyer comes in as the Cubs’ GM.

So in one decision, Epstein has rocked the executive world of three franchises. And, it seems, a lot of nepotism was in play since Cherington and Hoyer worked together as co-GMs during Epstein’s absence from the Red Sox in ’05. Remember too, it was Hoyer who traded All Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez to the Red Sox.

The good news for the Padres is that they get a few players in exchange for letting Hoyer go. The San Diego club is turning the reigns over to Josh Byrnes — another former Theo Epstein assistant — who was the Padres’ former Vice President of Baseball Operations.

All this and baseball hasn’t even hit the off-season yet.

Of all the Guinness World Records we’ve written about here at LBS, this is one of our favorites. The Padres set a Guinness World Record for most dogs in a pet costume parade. No joke. Check it out:

337 dogs showed up for the Padres’ annual “Dog Days of Summer” event. In addition to the costume party, dogs had the opportunity to participate in a pre-game “tail” gate party where prizes were awarded to the best-dressed dogs. Seriously, these pooches in costumes looked better than all the Angels fans wearing wrestling masks and the Rangers fans wearing their sunglasses to set records.

My favorite was the dog that had the glove attached to its back. Probably could play the outfield better than Juan Rivera.

Here are more pictures of the canine takeover:

Heath Bell has been sporting a Yoda backpack for good luck and it apparently inspired some sort of mini-Star Wars convention in the Padres bullpen Thursday, Big League Stew pointed out. You can see the Yoda backpack hanging on the left while Bell and two others wear their towels in Princess Leia-style wrappings.

Those darned relief pitchers will do just about anything to stay awake. At least it’s better than getting caught sleeping in the bullpen like this clown was. Check out more pictures of the Star Wars crew at Big League Stew.

The San Diego Padres already have a tough enough time scoring runs as it is. The last thing they need is umpires taking runs away from them. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday night thanks to familiar foe Joe West.

The Pads were tied with the D-Backs 1-1 in the top of the 2nd and Eric Patterson led off the inning with a triple. The next batter, catcher Rob Johnson, hit a line drive to right fielder Justin Upton. Patterson got back to the bag quickly to tag up, went home, and beat the throw. It looked like San Diego had a 2-1 lead. But Arizona appealed to see if Patterson left the bag to early and umpire Joe West said he did, reversing the run and turning it into a double play.

Padres manager Bud Black went out to discuss the call, and lip reading shows West told Black that Patterson left before Upton caught the ball. First off, replays on both the Padres and the Diamondbacks telecasts show Patterson did not leave early. Secondly, they both also show that WEST WASN’T EVEN WATCHING THE BAG!!!

Here’s a picture that shows West was watching the right fielder and not the bag:

Read The Rest of the Story…