During a Nationals game, chaos started when Howie Kendrick stepped to the plate unsure if he had the right bat. He kept glancing at it between pitches, even saying out loud he didn’t know whose bat it was. After a couple of balls and strikes, a check swing led to some confusion. The ump ruled it a ball, but one of the announcers argued he swung. Kendrick laughed it off, still unclear about the whole bat situation. Later he hit a slow grounder and got thrown out at first, with the first base coach and ump exchanging words after the play.
Then things boiled over. The Nationals’ first base coach got tossed. It wasn’t at first clear why, but a heated conversation followed. The coach asked why he got ejected, and the ump said it was because he thought the coach said something disrespectful. The coach pushed back, saying the ump should know him better than that. Apparently, the two go way back and know each other personally, which made the argument even more intense. The coach, finally getting a shot at the role, was left trying to figure out what just happened. He summed up the job as “I just yell back and hold on to the players’ gloves” and seemed confused about the whole ejection. Tensions were high, but the moment added a strange and memorable twist to the game.