The San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia continued to escalate their growing rivalry with a bench-clearing brawl Friday night. Ramon Ramirez pegged Shane Victorino right around the belt level while the Phillies were leading 8-2. It seemed like a pretty simply purpose pitch and it served to anger Victorino, who flipped his bat and started making his way to the mound.
Eli Whiteside immediately got in front of him as catchers often do, but then he started hopping around as if looking for a fight. After it was over he acted surprised to be tossed, but this video would seem to indicate sufficient reason to throw him out. The two sides have two more games this weekend, although I wouldn't expect much in the way of shenanigans. They'll save that for next season when they meet up again in the regular season. Although, if they meet in the playoffs it could make for another incident similar to last year's NLCS skirmish.