Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Emotions run high over nothing

Oh, testosterone.

So for the last out of the game yesterday, Steven Souza Jr. hit the ball hard. Every previous ball hit that hard and with that launch angle in that ballpark had been a home run. But this one wasn’t, and Pillar made the catch.

Souza thought it was a home run and didn’t run as hard as he could have. Toronto catcher Russel Martin thought it was a home run, and told Souza as much. The stadium being loud and all, Souza couldn’t hear what Martin said, and tried to get some clarification (and maybe he was on edge because he knew he hadn’t run on a ball in play, and that’s been sort of a point of emphasis recently).

Troy Tulowitzki, from shortstop, saw this exchange and thought there was a problem, so he came running in to start something.

Everyone else saw Tulowitzki and Souza have an unkind exchange, and the benches cleared.

Yikes. It’s a good thing baseball teams don’t get put in charge of more important things.

Castro: Hey—when Apollo 13 took off, I really thought it was going to make it to the moon.

Nixon: What did you say?

Kruschev: We will bury you.

Links:

• The Rays may be far out of the playoff race, but there is history left to play for.

• Logan Morrison is indeed out for the rest of the season.
• Rich Hill was pulled from a perfect game. Chris Anders discusses and rounds up the reactions.
• Tagging is a skill that no one talks about but that’s become more important in the replay era, and August Fagerstrom writes that Javier Baez’s tag game is strong.
• Sarah Wexler recapped the first episode of “Pitch.”
• Send the stars to the Olympics? Russell Carleton thinks it through.