Lawrie appeals 4-game sentence

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This article was published 17/05/2012 (5242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos sounded like a parent defending young slugger Brett Lawrie.

A good kid who didn’t mean to do bad. Caught up in the emotion of the moment. He shouldn’t have done it, but he’s only human.

“I’m not going to blame him (Lawrie) for being upset,” Anthopoulos told reporters Wednesday after Lawrie was suspended for four games in the wake of hitting umpire Bill Miller with his helmet.

“That’s what a competitor is. I think anybody in a normal circumstance would get upset, it’s just the way you deal with it.”

Lawrie’s temper tantrum over two controversial strike calls resulted in the ban from Major League Baseball on Wednesday. After being ejected by Miller following a called third strike Tuesday night in the ninth inning of a 4-3 loss to Tampa, Lawrie slammed his batting helmet into the ground.

Unfortunately for the fiery 22-year-old from Langley, B.C., the helmet bounced up and smacked Miller’s hip.

Lawrie has appealed the suspension, meaning he was in the lineup Wednesday against the visiting New York Yankees.

His defence?

“In a nutshell, it’s just I didn’t mean to hit him,” he said.

“I feel I have the right to explain my side of the story about what happened,” he added.

Lawrie apologized after the game Tuesday and said Wednesday he planned to speak to Miller directly to apologize.

He didn’t have too far to look. His third base companion for the night was none other than Miller, who made the normal umpire rotation from home plate to the hot corner.

Miller and his colleagues were roundly booed as they walked on the field Wednesday. Lawrie drew warm applause when he came to the plate in the second inning, grounding into a forceout and then stealing second before being driven in by a J.P. Arencibia homer.

Lawrie, who went into Wednesday’s game with a club-best .308 average in May, finished the night without a hit and struck out twice without making a fuss.

Helmetgate did manage, at last briefly, to deflect the spotlight from a Jays team that had lost three straight and seven of its last 10 going into Wednesday’s 8-1 win over the Yankees before 28,915 under the dome.

Walks and errors had featured prominently earlier in the week but the Jays (20-18) won with the long ball Wednesday with homers from Arencibia, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista and Kelly Johnson.

Manager John Farrell said the spotlight on Lawrie had not affected his team, which he said has shown all season that it can separate itself from whatever happened the previous day.

“They came out very focused, a lot of energy, and a lot of good at bats,” he said. “So it wasn’t a distraction, I think…”

— The Canadian Press