The Tommy Pham-Joc Pederson incident will go down as one of the stranger things we’ve ever seen on a baseball field.
To recap: Nearly a month ago, Pham slapped Pederson in the face before a Giants-Reds game in Cincinnati over a fantasy football dispute from last year. Pham was apparently still angry about how Pederson had used his IR designation and a GIF that Pederson had sent to the league group chat.
Pham expressed no remorse and was suspended for the series.
“Well first of all that’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen,” Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow said on KNBR Friday morning. “I’ve never seen an opposing player come out in the middle of the outfield and slap somebody. I mean, what?”
Pederson did not retaliate and seemed to want to move on from the incident. With the Reds returning to Oracle Park this weekend and Pham back in the lineup, should the Giants let sleeping dogs lie? That question was posed to Kruk, who said in his day there would absolutely be retaliation, but these days it’s not worth it.
“For Joc Pederson he wasn’t prepared for that. He’s never seen it either. So what is this guy doing? I thought that was BS, is what I thought it was. I think in a different generation he probably would’ve wore one, but those guys can’t do that now.
“They still want to. They want to as bad as guys did in any generation of baseball. Going back 150 years. That’s just not allowed. You take care of your own. You protect your own. If somebody comes in and assaults your guy — that’s what it was, he assaulted him — you’d take care of it. But it’s not allowed anymore.
“It’s not allowed now because if he does something about it, whoever does something about it is going to be suspended up to a week without pay, and the manager is going to be out for a couple of days. So you can’t do it and you just have to wear it.”
Still, Krukow believes there is a way for the Giants fans to get back at Pham.
“But, the X factor becomes the people in the stands. Now I hope they don’t throw anything at him, I hope they don’t stalk him away from the ballpark, I hope none of that happens. But I think verbally he’s going to get an earful or two or five.
“This is our ballpark, and our fans will definitely let you know. They can be pretty aggressive verbally, and I encourage whoever is going out there to give him a boo.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 – 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.
