With the Mariners already feeling hurt because a previous pitch thrown by Andrew Wantz was close to Julio Rodriguez’s header, Wantz then hit Jesse Winker on the hip.
This provoked scenes of anger as a furious Winker headed for the Los Angeles bench, led both benches into emptiness and eventually led to eight expulsions.
“That probably shouldn’t happen in the game, which is what happened today,” Seattle coach Scott Servais, one of those expelled, told reporters.
“Emotions were mating, but it was pretty clear what was going on. They changed, they put an opener in there to throw some balls at us. It got out of our hands and a kind of black eye.”
There was a delay of almost 20 minutes before the game resumed and Angels coach Phil Nevin said the eight-game series in 11 days between those teams contributed to the “ugly” scenes.
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“Look, you play eight games in a matter of a week against the same team, things like this happen,” Nevin said. “Scheduling, tensions, that’s baseball sometimes, unfortunately.
“There are some ugly incidents from time to time. I think that’s what happened today.”
Winker was far from contrite for his role in the fight, but offered his apologies to the fans after the cameras caught him lifting their middle fingers as he left the field.
“The only thing I will apologize for is to drop the fans,” he said. “That’s all. As fans, they’re spending their earned money to come see us play a game, and they didn’t deserve that, so I apologize to the fans, especially the women and children.”
The Angels finally got a 2-1 victory after Luis Rengifo hit a home run to tie the game and then David MacKinnon scored a single in the seventh inning.