While you might think that the ugliest part of last night’s Yankees-Red Sox donnybrook was guys like Joe Kelly and Tyler Austin trying to bloody each other in the infield, Yankees third-base coach Phil Nevin has other concerns—namely, hand waving from Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
Nevin got tossed towards the end of the teams’ confrontation because he was screaming at the Red Sox dugout. Cora laughed off Nevin’s words, appeared to talk a bit of shit, and waved at him.
That’s the whole damn thing. But it was enough to bother Nevin even after he slept on it. On Thursday, he told reporters that Cora, the guy he had yelled at, was being “pretty unprofessional.” From ESPN:
“When I was on the field, I did say something to him, absolutely, right to his face — and a couple of their coaches, I think,” Nevin said. “Just let them know how I felt about what happened with Austin and that was it. At the time, there was zero response [from Cora]. In fact, maybe even a little backpedal, if you will.
“Then, when I was on the other side, I saw a gesture made to me. Maybe I saw it wrong. If I did, then I guess those things happen, too. But that’s what set me off. I saw something that was directed to me when I was back out at third. To tell somebody to go back and get in their little box when everybody saw that, that’s pretty unprofessional.”
To recap, Nevin got in the faces of a couple of Red Sox coaches, and he thinks Cora’s the bad guy for telling him to go away. It’s enough of a stretch that even Nevin’s own boss, Aaron Boone, wouldn’t defend his man.
“I don’t necessarily see it that way from Phil’s standpoint,” Boone said when asked if Cora was unprofessional.
MLB fined both Cora and Nevin for the very bad things they did.