Oops! Bryce Harper slipped and fell after running through the first base bag in the sixth inning on Sunday. Davey Johnson double-switched Harper out of the game in the middle of the sixth, at which point Harper reportedly went down into the clubhouse tunnel and started smashing batting helmets or something.
Via Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post, Davey Johnson explains the aftermath of the double-switch:
"I told [bench coach] Randy [Knorr], ‘Tell the kid, I have one player left and I’m double switching with him,’ so he doesn’t kill himself down there,” Johnson said. “He didn’t get to him right away. [Harper] was destroying helmets in the runway. So I said, ‘Randy, will you get to him? Please get to him.’ But I really had no choice. I didn’t care if it was Babe Ruth. I had one player left and I have to have as many batters to stay in the game as possible."
(Davey Johnson via Nationals Journal, 8/26/2012)
Since MLB.com has made the video of Harper falling down embeddable (video here, also), and there isn't any video available of Harper destroying helmets, we went with the video of Harper falling down, above. Meanwhile, was it Mike Rizzo questioning Davey's double-switch that led to the post-game shouting match in which Davey reportedly yelled "You come down and manage the team"? Too bad there's no video of that...
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