Pool party
The Dodgers' celebration in 2013 capped a bitter year for the D-backs that included a brawl in Los Angeles and a late-season meltdown. Finally, Arizona has decided to move on.
After 10 years, the Arizona Diamondbacks finally figured out the best way to keep the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the swimming pool at Chase Field was to beat them on the field rather than to call in Phoenix’s finest.
With the Dodgers and Diamondbacks meeting in the National League Division Series, D-Backs CEO Derrick Hall decided it was time to put an end to this chapter of the rivalry.
“They have the right to celebrate wherever they want, however they want,” Hall told reporters on Oct. 6 as the team prepared to start the best-of-five series.
That has not been the D-backs’ attitude — nor Hall’s — over the last decade.
This all goes back to Sept. 19, 2013 when the Dodgers clinched the National League West title with a 7-6 win over the D-backs at Chase Field.
In many ways, the game epitomized the season for the D-Backs, who scored six times in the third inning to take a 6-3 lead. The Dodgers chipped away to tie and took the lead when catcher A.J. Ellis led off the eighth with a homer to left off Josh Collmenter.
Celebration
The Dodgers sprinted for the right-field fence and hopped into the pool area and went swimming.
The D-backs had taken a dip in the pool when they clinched the NL West title two years earlier. But, hey, it was their pool.
The Diamondbacks had asked the Dodgers to stay out of the pool, but Dodgers manager Don Mattingly had told the players they could do celebrate any way they wanted.
The celebration was shown live back to Southern California on Fox Sports West One and heavily photographed.
"I could call it disrespectful and classless," Hall said in an email to Arizona Republic reporter Zach Buchanan, "but they don't have a beautiful pool at their old park and must have really wanted to see what one was like."
“I highly doubt the New York Yankees would do something like that," D-backs infielder Willie Bloomquist told Buchanan.
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) also called the Dodgers out for their crassness.
And the blowback was just getting started.
Did the Dodgers wee-wee in the pool?
I was at the game, sitting on a patio outside the brewpub in right field that day. I had a great view of the pool. Regrettably, I did not stay and watch the celebration in part. I took off when I saw the Dodgers running for the pool. It was an afternoon game and I needed to start my shift at The Arizona Republic (I had received permission to come in a little late.)
If I had stayed a few more minutes I might be able to definitively answer the question. Did the Dodgers urinate in the pool?
As I recall, there was a rumor about that almost immediately.
A few days later, Tony Jackson, who had been a Dodgers beat writer for the LA Daily News and ESPN Los Angeles was now writing his own blog, reported that a Dodgers player told him a player or players had urinated in the pool. Jackson did not name the player who was his source.
I don’t doubt that a player told him that. But I have always doubted that it happened.
Why?
Well, it was being shown live on TV in Los Angeles. There were news photographers present.
I know baseball players are capable of some uncouth things, but I don’t think your teammates would like to see you doing that while they are swimming.
I suppose maybe you could do it after everyone was out of the water and the news people — if they all left before all the players — exited. But even after the game, the park has plenty of workers still around. The pool is highly visible. And many of those workers are not Dodgers fans.
June brawl
True or not, the story gave the D-backs one more reason to dislike their division rivals. Not that they needed more. As the old-timey writers and broadcasters used to say, there was no love lost between these two.
The temperature in the rivalry had risen a few degrees back on June 11.
The visiting D-backs entered the game in first place 2 games ahead of the Giants and Rockies. The Dodgers at the time were last in the NL West, 8.5 games back.
Arizona had been complaining about D-backs batters getting hit by pitches. Manager Kirk Gibson had promised retaliation.
In the fifth inning, Dodgers starter Zack Greinke plunked Cody Ross. This actually turned out to be fortuitous. Jason Kubel followed with a home run to give the D-backs a 2-0 lead.
In the bottom of the sixth, D-backs pitcher Ian Kennedy nailed Yasiel Puig in the nose with a fastball. Puig crumpled but eventually took his base. Andre Ethier followed with a homer to tie the game.
In the top of the seventh, Greinke hit catcher Miguel Montero in the back. Both benches cleared, but this turned out to be a warmup act. No punches were thrown.
In the bottom of the seventh, Kennedy threw a fastball that was headed for Greinke’s head. Greinke managed to get his shoulder up. The ball deflected off his shoulder and knocked off his helmet.
Home plate umpire Clint Fagan immediately signaled that the pitcher was ejected, but it looked like Kennedy had already started to walk off.
Both benches were cleared. Puig was ejected for punching D-backs third baseman Eric Henske in the back of the head. Dodgers pitcher J.P. Howell drove D-backs assistant hitting coach Turner Ward into the railing by camera well next to the D-backs dugout. Dodgers coach Mark McGwire and D-backs coach Matt Williams wrestled each other a bit.
No serious injuries, but more action than your average baseball brawl.
Season turnaround
The Dodgers went on to win 5-3. LA Times beat writer Dylan Hernandez wondered if Puig, clearly the angriest of the Dodgers during the brawl, had added a sense of urgency to this team after only playing nine games in the majors. Would this be the spark that turned the season around for the Dodgers?
Although they lost to the D-backs the next day, the Dodgers played better from that point on and finished 92-70.
The D-backs finished 81-81, their second straight .500 season.
It’s fun and easy to point to an emotional victory as the turning point in a season. But Hernandez’s game story gives another hint for what may have made a difference in the 2013 Dodgers’ fortunes from that point on: “(N)ewly appointed closer Kenley Jansen pitched a perfect ninth to preserve the victory.”
Keeping the fire stoked
Anyway, you could see where the D-backs would find the Dodgers’ clinching win and celebration particularly galling, considering they lost an emotional game in June and the course of each team’s season went in opposite directions.
Not content to let it go, four years later the D-backs asked to have mounted Phoenix police stationed in front of the pool after the Dodgers won Game 3 to sweep their NLDS.
Or perhaps it was a way to energize the D-backs’ fan base — whose enthusiasm often falls between laid back and comatose.
And the D-backs called the cops again last season when the Dodgers clinched the NL West title at Chase Field
Why continue and why the change now?
Hall had started his career with the Dodgers, working his way up to senior vice president of communications. He left the team early in the chaotic reign of real estate developer and serial litigant Frank McCourt.
Hall spent a short time working for KB Homes and then landed with the D-Backs, working his way up to CEO.
So he might harbor some ill-will toward his former employer, although he has never said anything like that.
Or perhaps it was a way to energize the D-backs’ fan base — whose enthusiasm often falls between laid back and comatose.
And the change of heart?
Not sure, but I did see this in his official bio: “Hall serves as the chair of MLB’s working group of club presidents focused on marketing the game of baseball.”
Perhaps Hall’s no-swimming-in-our-pool stance didn’t sit well with his fellow committee members, especially as baseball tries to sell itself to younger fans (who seem to love celebrations — the more ostentatious the better).
This season, it is a moot point. When the D-backs beat the Dodgers 4-2 in Game 2 of the LDS to take a 2-0 series lead, it meant the Dodgers could not clinch the series in Arizona.
And, for all you D-backs fans, isn’t that so much better?