Column: Manny Machado play ‘bush league’? Hardly

Everyone knew this was coming, right? This was telegraphed Western Union-style, the second Manny Machado climbed into a Padres uniform. The moment a whiff of on-field controversy surfaced, the sentence would be delivered.

Guilty.

Of course, Machado intended to (barely, almost, maybe) brush Diamondbacks catcher John Ryan Murphy on a sixth-inning pop-up Tuesday during Arizona’s 8-5 win at Petco Park. The bat he gently tossed to the grass in Murphy’s general direction, portrayed as someone trying to launch a bowling ball at an opponent’s ankles like a 7-10 split.

The Diamondbacks broadcast team hardly held back.

“Look at this,” said play-by-play announcer Steve Berthiaume, analyzing the replay. “This is bush league, right here. That’s bush league.”

Outside the Padres’ clubhouse Wednesday morning, Berthiaume’s partner Bob Brenly doubled down.

“Given his history, he gets no benefit of the doubt from me,” said Brenly, the former Diamondbacks manager. “There used to be a way to take care of that in the game. I better stop.”

Let’s be clear: That’s code for throwing at a guy.

First of all, really? For that? For something that in no way impeded Murphy’s path to the ball or ability to make a play that, for the record, he didn’t?

Home-plate umpire Bill Welke flagged Machado for interference, Padres manager Andy Green spit-balled his way to an ejection and baseball’s antihero collected another “See, told you so” moment.

“I don’t even know how to answer that,” said Machado, when asked about the TV comments Wednesday after homering for the first time as a Padres player in a 4-1 win. “It doesn’t bother me. If their catcher didn’t feel it, and I was having a conversation with him, it’s all good. We’re just playing baseball out there. I was dealt a horrible call. You’ve just got to move on from it.”

Some of Machado’s teammates, however, framed more pointed opinions.

“I don’t understand the ‘bush league’ comments on that,” Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “It sounds like they’re searching for something. It’s like they were waiting for something to happen to exploit it. They can stay in the booth with that stuff.”

The bigger point in all of it — the 10,000-foot perspective — is that Machado owns as many benefit-of-the-doubt cards as a fox lounging around a hen house.

Whether he deserves one, simply by changing uniforms, remains debatable. There are enough uncomfortable moments of his own design, before he lobbed his John Hancock onto a $300 million contract, to strain trust beyond his own clubhouse walls.

That play, though, a split second non-event without any real impact on the defensive player, seemed a controversy bridge too far. Certainly too far for this comment from Brenly on the broadcast: “Machado one day is going to pull one of his high jinks on the wrong guy and he’s going to get dropped in his tracks.”

“It’s unwarranted. There’s nothing wrong with that play,” said Padres pitcher Craig Stammen, who watched the replay on Petco’s video board and later that night. “If anything, he was trying to put his bat in a place that wasn’t a big deal. He could have tossed his bat as hard as he could and it would have looked worse. Whatever.

“If you think that’s bad, you’re looking for something.”

After the game Tuesday, Machado expressed confusion about the fuss.

“I hit the fly ball, looked up, saw it, put my head down and went to go run,” Machado said. “I don’t even think I touched him. He said, ‘No.’ Things happen on the ballfield. … I don’t think I hit him.”

To clarify, Brenly said he personally had no issues with the feet. To him, it’s the bat.

“The bat drops a little too close to the catcher,” he said. “There’s the potential for injury there.”

From the other dugout, manager Andy Green offered a rebuttal.

“The bat had no bearing on the play whatsoever,” he said.

Did Brenly see intent?

“You’d have to ask him, but you know what he’s going to say,” Brenly said.

That, we’re reminded, will be Machado’s lot in baseball life. Shoot first, ask questions later. Make no mistake, well-worn incidents from his past fairly open him to criticism and hyper, magnified analysis.

Machado, to a degree, is sleeping in a baseball bed of his making. There will be days he deserves the daggers. This one, though, felt like a thin-skinned reach.

“They’re looking for anything,” Stammen said. “If he steps on an ant, they’ll want to bury him and keep him the villain.”

Hosmer added what he offered as more context.

“If they were to take offense to it (Diamondbacks), they would have reacted and done something to stick up for their team,” he said. “That’s usually what you do when something ‘bush league’ happens. You stick up for your team.”

The day undoubtedly will come when Machado skull-cramps and deserves to be called out.

That day wasn’t Tuesday.