The Padres locker room read what Rosenthal had to say, and reacted accordingly.
After two full days of bad blood, the San Diego Padres finally got the chance to exact revenge on the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the NLDS, and they took full advantage. The Friars scored six runs in a wild bottom of the second inning, highlighted by some heads-up base-running from Manny Machado and another monster homer by Fernando Tatis Jr. that touched off a party at Petco Park. San Diego now leads this best-of-five series 2-1, and despite a historically lavish offseason, L.A. is one more loss away from an early exit.
But the Dodgers weren’t the only ones in the Padres’ crosshairs on Wednesday night.
Padres reportedly boycott Ken Rosenthal in NLDS Game 3 after controversial column
Amid all the controversy in the fallout to Game 2, reporter Ken Rosenthal published a column in The Athletic that raised a lot of eyebrows around the league — and especially in the Padres clubhouse. While most people saw debris flying from the Dodger Stadium stands and Dodgers players and coaches going out of their way to create conflict, Rosenthal had a decidedly … different take on the whole affair.
According to Rosenthal, it was the Padres, not the Dodgers, who were the primary instigators here, part of a long pattern of provocative behavior. Rosenthal went after Machado in particular, taking him to task for his war of words with Los Angeles pitcher Jack Flaherty and dubbing his toss of a warmup ball toward the Dodgers dugout the “Sinister Sling”.
But he didn’t stop there: “Machado is far from the Padres’ only irritant,” Rosenthal wrote. “Fernando Tatis Jr. is a smiling, dancing peacock. Jurickson Profar is the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school and then asks, “Who, me?””
That’s some pretty inflammatory rhetoric, going well beyond criticism of individual actions to criticism of several players’ characters. And the Padres, unsurprisingly, weren’t happy about it: According to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the team went so far as to bar Rosenthal from the dugout during FOX’s broadcast of Game 3.
Rosenthal conducted in-game interviews with Dodgers like manager Dave Roberts and outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, but he didn’t talk to anyone on the San Diego side. Acee reports that this was very much intentional, adding that the Padres “were not pleased with Rosenthal’s brand of journalism”.
And really, can you blame them? It’s one thing to find fault with some of the ways the Padres conducted themselves during Games 1 and 2 in L.A. But Rosenthal more or less laid the blame solely at San Diego’s feet, which feels like an unfair retelling — especially from a columnist with a national reach. And the ways Rosenthal described Machado, Tatis Jr. and Profar were over the line, some of the most personal stuff you’ll see put in print about an athlete. It’s no surprise that Padres players weren’t thrilled at the idea of talking to Rosenthal in person just a day later, although Acee reports that the boycott will be lifted for Game 4 on Thursday night.
We can only hope that Tatis Jr. goes deep again, if only for the sight of the two of them face-to-face on live television.
