The Globe and Mail

Toronto Blue Jays third base coach Brian Butterfield likes nothing more than tough, aggressive baserunning, but when asked about a pair of borderline slides by the New York Yankees against his infielders this week he didn't mince words.
"They were both terrible — you can print that," he said Wednesday before the teams squared off in the series finale. "Two terrible slides. They're terrible, if they don't agree with that, they're looking through different coloured glasses."
The plays in question were a Johnny Damon slide into second base against Aaron Hill in Monday's 5-4 Yankees win and the way Shelley Duncan came into second against shortstop John McDonald in New York's 9-2 win Tuesday.
The latter play was much uglier, with Duncan sliding late in the sixth inning and coming in spikes high into McDonald's glove, sending it into left field. The soft-spoken McDonald said he didn't have a problem with the play while Duncan denied any wrongdoing.
"How I went into second base is how I always go into second base: hard," Duncan said after Tuesday's game. "I play the game that way."
The Damon play came in the fifth, when he collided with Hill on a forceout and appeared to clip Hill in the leg. The Yankees outfielder took exception to Butterfield's take on the play.
"He shouldn't be complaining about that," said Damon. "I was almost safe on that, that's what I had to do. I didn't go at Hill's legs or anything. I knew I was coming in hard and I was like, 'heads up,' and he moved out of the way."
Hill said he told Damon he was OK with the play and felt Butterfield, whose duties include working with the infielders, was just being protective of his players.
"Butter, I think he was upset about it, because he sees his middle infielders get almost taken out," said Hill. "We didn't find anything wrong with it. ...
"I didn't think anything of (the Damon play) when it happened. It was the last out and he was just coming in hard. I don't mind that at all.
"The one with Duncan, from what I hear, that's just the way he does things. I'm glad that no one got hurt, because it was clean, but it was a little excessive. At the same time, it's hard baseball and the guy is doing his job."
The slides have been mostly in the background of a testy series marked by a pitch thrown behind Alex Rodriguez in Monday's opener by rookie Jesse Litsch and a Josh Towers fastball that hit the superstar in the left calf on Tuesday.
Rodriguez wasn't in the starting lineup for Wednesday's contest.
The dugouts cleared twice after Rodriguez was hit and a pair of pushing-and-shoving sessions followed. Roger Clemens later nailed Alex Rios in the back to start the seventh in retaliation and he and manager Joe Torre may face some sort of discipline.
"They've been intense games, no question about it," said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. "It's that time of year, they're trying to make their move and we're trying to do the same thing."
The bad blood stems from a New York's 10-5 win in Toronto on May 30, when Rodriguez tricked former Jays infielder into letting an infield fly drop with a fake "mine" call as he ran toward third base.
Hill was among those ready to put an end to all the ill will.
"Everything about it last night was stupid and it was something that should've been over a long time ago," said Hill. "It started this big, long mess and it was definitely unneeded and we got embarrassed (in the game)."
Towers also drew the ire of Torre by blaming Yankees first base coach Tony Pena for igniting the second dugout clearing and later calling the former Kansas City Royals manager, "a quitter. He managed a team and quit in the middle of the season because he couldn't hack it."
Pena had little to say about it but Torre stood up for his coach.
"I'd like to believe it was an emotional thing he was sorry he said the day after he said it," said Torre. "Usually when you form an opinion about somebody you'd like to know a little more about them than reading something in the paper or hearing something from somebody else."