A Short Post That Will Leave A Lot Out

The Tampa Bay Rays have been struggling lately, and Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton got into it the other day in the dugout after Upton appeared to jog after an extra-base hit that gave the runner an extra base. They exchanged very heated words - on camera - and Upton had to be picked up and lifted away by Willy Aybar before things got real.

There was initial concern, but the Rays are good. The incident is now being seen as evidence of Longoria's leadership.

The Seattle Mariners were struggling pretty bad, and when the Griffey-napping story came out, it made the veterans in the clubhouse angry. Mike Sweeney rather famously offered to fight whichever player it was that leaked the story to Larry LaRue.

The Mariners aren't good. That incident was seen by most as evidence that the clubhouse was fracturing apart, and was nowhere close to being as cohesive as it was in 2009.

Of course, Sweeney was just being a leader. The idea of Mike Sweeney getting into a fistfight with a teammate is comical to all of us, given Sweeney's personality and the total high schoolitude of it all, but Sweeney wasn't actually going to throw any punches. He was just being a veteran and sending a message. The message being, hey, don't do that. Don't leak those things.

I don't have a grand, overarching point here, except to point out this difference in reception, and also to caution you against haste in forming an opinion of an incident between teammates. The interpersonal dynamics of clubhouse chemistry are complicated. Sometimes events that seem meaningful are not. And sometimes events that seem meaningful in one way are actually meaningful in another. The next time some players get angry or confrontational* with one another, put your Internet down for a moment and ask yourself why, and what it means.

* excepted: Carlos Zambrano, on account of crazy