So this week’s Flashback Friday is Twins-related on a technicality. It’s about current Minnesota Twins manager Paul Molitor from his last year with the Toronto Blue Jays (1995), which is the season before he joined the Twins to wrap up his illustrious, Hall of Fame career.
Plus, it’s just too good not to share. A little over two years ago I was poking around the internet to find information on Molitor after he was hired as the manager of the Twins. I happened upon an American League Umpire’s Report that was for sale on Pristine Auction.
The top of the page read “Paul Molitor Umpire Ejection Report Completely Filled Out by Umpire Al Clark.” My first reaction was “Whoa!” because Molitor seemed like a fairly mild-mannered guy as a player — I only saw his later years as a fan — so naturally I wondered what it had taken for him to get thrown out of a game. I kind of likened it in my mind to what it might take for Joe Mauer to get tossed.
It was also before this happened:
Uh, I wouldn’t recommend doing any lip reading near the end of that video.
Anyway, the cool thing is that you can zoom right in to the pictures and get a pretty good idea exactly Molitor said that drew the ire of Clark to the point where he ejected him in the first inning of the Sept. 14, 1995 game. For point of reference, YYZ is the airport code for Toronto. Here’s the link for that game from Baseball Reference.
Here are the images (photo credit: PristineAuction.com):
My best deciphering of the incident is as follows:
“YYZ batter Paul Molitor was called out on appeal of a half swing. He protested initially by stepping backward out of the batter’s box while tossing his bat with both hands over his back toward the YYZ bench. He immediately proceeded to yell at first base umpire Greg Kosc, “You suck, you f*ckin’ suck.” He was ejected immediately.”
Verdict: Paul Molitor is kind of a badass.
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