Photo courtesy of OverTheMonster and Presswire
The Yankees/Red Sox rivalry has been notorious for many generations back. For the majority, the fussing and the hype has been kept on the field, or in the stands between the fans. Very rarely does the competition get in between the players’ personal lives. In fact, David Ortiz has notably always invited many current and previous Yankees to his golfing charity tournament, which he holds annually in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic benefiting his foundation the David Ortiz Children’s Fund. Although sometimes the fans forget that these guys are friends outside of their uniforms, the players never do.
However, Mark Teixeira and Red Sox reliever Vicente Padilla have added more fuel to their fire lately. During the time these two were teammates with the Texas Rangers from 2006-2007, Teixeira has expressed that he believed he was constantly getting hit by pitches from opposing teams as a retaliation to Padilla’s league-leading 26-hit-batters list.
On games the two rival teams have played within the past month, Padilla has taken it to the media to express his feelings for the Yankees first baseman. “I believe he does have a bit of a problem with Hispanic players, because it wasn’t just against me when we were teammates,” Padilla told Latino reporters for ESPN Deportes.
At the same game, Padilla continued with a quote to NESN.com stating, “The things Teixeira has done against the Latinos [on the Rangers] — he doesn’t open his mouth about. He once threatened me and said he was going to hit me with a bat, and that’s when we were playing on the same team.”
I have never seen Teixeira verbally or non-verbally express any sort of hatred towards Latino ball players. The Yankees are known for having a melting pot of cultures on the roster, from Alex Rodriguez to Ramiro Peña to Eduardo Nuñez, and when any one of the Latino players hits a homerun or does a nice field play, Teixeira is always seen congratulating them without any type of indifference shown. Who knows what anybody says or does behind closed doors, but all I’ve seen from him is team effort, skin color unaccounted for.
One of the things I despised, and lost respect for Padilla when he said it, was a comment in the sense that “Teixeira is better off playing a woman’s sport.” It was uncalled for, sexist, and just childish. Instead on concentrating so much on an opponent, he should be concerned with perfecting his craft.
“Completely erroneous,” is what Teixeira had to say about the racism accusations. “He doesn’t have a lot of friends in the game.”
The two teams face each other a couple of more times before the regular season ends, so we will see how this war of words concludes.
