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The New York Yankees defeated the Kansas City Royals 3-1 on Thursday night in Game 4 of the ALDS, thereby clinching the series and advancing to the AL Championship Series. The Yankees will await the winners of Saturday's game between the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers, with the ALCS slated to open Monday in New York.
One eyebrow-raising moment from Thursday's win came during the bottom of the sixth inning, when the benches and bullpens cleared following the completion of a double play. As you can see below, Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe applied a tag to Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia to get the second out; Garcia seemed to slide a little late, and Volpe appeared to make contact with Garcia's upper body with his arm. The scene escalated afterward, however, with Volpe's teammates Gerrit Cole and Jazz Chisholm both seemingly taking exception to Garcia's conduct. Take a look:
Chisholm, for his part, offered the most biting rebuke of Garcia.
"I just felt like he tried to go and injure Volpe because he was being a sore loser," he told reporters (via MLB.com). "He was talking a lot on Instagram and Twitter and stuff. I do the same thing, but I'm not gonna go and try and injure somebody if they're winning a game, and I didn't like that so I told him we don't do that on this side and I'm always gonna stick up for my guys."
Garcia's perspective was offered by Royals skipper Matt Quatraro, who told reporters that Garcia was frustrated because he felt Volpe had blocked the base.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, meanwhile, may have had the best perspective on the matter: he didn't seem to have much insight into what exactly caused the brouhaha, and he also didn't seem to care.
"If there's [someone] upset over the slide," Boone said during his postgame press conference, "just go back and show a little Hal McRae-Willie Randolph and we'll all laugh at ourselves."
For anyone who doesn't get the reference, well, here it is, from Game 2 of the 1977 ALCS that was, fittingly, also between the Yankees and the Royals:
It's worth noting that the Yankees and Royals engaged in more extracurricular activity later in that series, with George Brett and Graig Nettles trading recipes following Brett's RBI triple in Game 5:
No matter what caused the dust-up on Thursday night or who bears the most responsibility for it, these Yankees and Royals won't have the opportunity to trade fisticuffs in their own Game 5 -- at least not this year. Instead, the Yankees will move on to play for the pennant and the Royals will go home for the winter.