Cole Hamels hit Bryce Harper with the first pitch of the at bat in the first inning of Sundays game in Washington. If I were a Phillies fan I'd have mixed feelings on this news.
By hitting the batter, Cole put one of his own players in danger of retaliation while simultaneously taking away the inside pitch from both teams for the rest of the game. Sure, dugouts were not warned, but a retaliation certainly would have caused such an effect.
However, the Phillies had lost the first two of that series and have learned the Nats are more than pretenders this season. Cole's effort was a good one last night and that kind of bravado is the kind of thing team can rally around. Of course, Bryce might have had the last laugh as he stole home later in the inning.
Then came the real fun. Hamels in an interview said he intentionally threw at Harper. Cole said when he first came up, he had to deal with the Rookie strike zone and wanted to give Harper a little taste of big league ball. There has already been some back and forth with the response from the Nats front office basically calling Cole a hack. Should make for good tv in the rest of the season series.
Either way, these are the kind of storylines that remind me why I love this game so much.
"Posted as a fan shot cause that's what this kind of info is for, just hope someone sees it as FanShots are rarely ever seen"
