CLEVELAND — Jose Bautista isn’t letting his fight with Rougned Odor go quietly.
The Blue Jays’ slugger, who was on the receiving end of Odor’s stunning right cross when the teams met in Arlington in mid-May, talked with Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci about the punch as part of a profile in the upcoming issue.
Bautista’s take: Odor was “looking for a fight,” and he tried to hit him with the baseball on a throw from second to first on the slide that sparked the fight.
“Was (Odor) out to play baseball that day? Maybe partly,” Bautista told Verducci. “Part of me also thinks that he was looking for a fight.”
And of the slide that sparked the brawl:
“I could have hit him,” Bautista said. “I could have hurt him. I chose not to. My cleats were down. I slid through the bag. Was it late? Yes, a hundred percent. But what can I do after they hit me? Should I ask my manager to let me pitch, which he is never going to let me do? Like, what am I supposed to do? Just sit there and take it?”
Odor, currently serving a seven-game suspension, is not with the Rangers in Cleveland and was unavailable for comment.
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