The ugly play from the Major League Baseball Playoffs is everywhere on Monday. In many places it's all anyone wants to talk about at all. That's understandable given the brutality involved; it was the kind of intentional collision you could catch from the corner of your eye on a muted TV at a crowded restaurant and be instantly jolted out the moment.
But the cold, hard truth of it, in the final analysis? Chase Utley's violent mugging of a slide that broke Ruben Tejada's leg like a piece of kindling is exactly what we as sports fans came to see.
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“He hit Tejada before he hit the ground,” Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer said after Saturday night's game. “To me that’s not a slide; that’s a tackle.”
Look for yourself and it's hard to argue with Cuddyer -- even if Utley defended the controversial play as "winning" baseball.
Here's Utley, on offense for the Los Angeles Dodgers, launching himself into Tejada. He mows him down. The New York Mets shortstop now has a broken leg, while New York and L.A. are tied a game apiece in their National League Division Series (NLDS).
So Tejada is out for the rest of the postseason and then some, but Utley will miss a maximum of two games after a suspension by Major League Baseball. The suspension's length caused much squawking all around: Some staunch old-school baseball types call that overly harsh; the folks taken aback by seeing the clip at a crowded restaurant can't fathom how Utley will be back so soon.
Further inflaming both sides: The fact that Utley was called safe on the play and allowed to remain at second base.
Just watched last 3 innings of NYM-LA - can't remember a cheaper play at 2B then that Utley slide. He should have just used a 2-by-4.— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) October 11, 2015
But amid the din, amid the hot takes and impassioned defenses and angry condemnations, is this perhaps uncomfortable truth: Utley just delivered. The MLB Playoffs have now begun. A sport often bogged down by stuffy unwritten rules has a post-season that struggles for conversation space with the NFL regular season and NBA training camp. Now that sport just got a double-shot of jet fuel thanks to Utley's kamikaze mission of a slide.
Now you have a heel. Now you have drama. Now you have spectacle. Now you have narrative, and a quest for revenge.
Turn this sh*t up to 11
Now you have bad blood. Mets ace Matt Harvey not-so-subtly hinted at sending some violent retaliation Utley's way before MLB announced its two-game suspension.
“As far as sticking up for your teammates, I think being out there and doing what’s right is exactly what I’m going to do,” Harvey said of his scheduled start in Monday night's pivotal Game 3.
"What's right" here functions as unsubtle code for a 95-mile-per-hour fastball leaving seam-prints somewhere on Utley's body. (Harvey already drilled Utley with one of those in April, by the way, just before Utley was traded to the Dodgers from the Phillies.)
You can be sure Harvey came to that conclusion the moment he watched Utley charge into Tejada and break his teammate's leg. The collision instantly incited baseball fans to belligerence, pouring lighter fluid on the MLB Playoffs. And if you were among those who only saw it from the corner of your eye, a surprise dose of violence from across a crowded room?