May 8

What in the world was Bob Watson thinking?

Ryan Rupe intentionally hit two batters, Frank Castillo accepted the free shot of the umpiring crew and drilled one and Trot Nixon flipped his bat towards the mound. And Castillo gets suspended for five days, Nixon four and Rupe none? Maybe the commissioner's office is trying to appease Vince Naimoli so he'll accept contraction.

		Maybe the commissioner's office is trying to appease Vince Naimoli so he'll accept contraction.

This is what happened: the Devil Rays (who we all know have had a thing with the Red Sox for three years) were upset about the way they lost Saturday night, when Nomar Garciaparra hit an 0-2, two-out double and Shea Hillenbrand hit a game-winning grand slam. So Rupe was told to hit Hillenbrand because Victor Zambrano couldn't get him out.

Then they wanted him to drill Garciaparra because they were convinced that Brian Daubach fed him the pitches from second base Saturday night. (When Joe Kerrigan took over as manager last August, he tried to get baserunners to tip pitches to batters, but Kerrigan says, "no one on the team wants to know what's coming so I gave up").

So Nixon did what he did, and as players have pointed out, it's very difficult to let a bat slip out of one's hands and not have it go behind him. Nixon earned the suspension, and he made his point, as no Devil Ray took him on.

But Castillo was granted the free shot and did it without hurting anyone. If Watson had been intentionally drilled by the Phillies' Larry Christiansen in 1976, don't you think he'd have wanted J.R. Richard, Larry Dierker, Joaquin Andujar or whoever was pitching to put a baseball on the derriere of Mike Schmidt or Greg Luzinski?

Oh yes. The Rays may have been upset for what they thought was sign-stealing, but they had a meeting at the end of the weekend to discuss how they should adopt the practice.