Jose Ramirez wasn't the first player to humiliate Tim Anderson this year. Yasmani Grandal allegedly slapped the shortstop like Will Smith at the Oscars.
It turns out the Tim Anderson-Jose Ramirez fight wasn't even the wildest thing to happen to Anderson this summer. He got Chris Rocked by a White Sox teammate, according to a report.
This comes from Shane Riordon of 670 The Score telling the story on the Parkins and Spiegel Show of how Yasmani Grandal did his best Will Smith impression before the All-Star Break this year.
And we're not talking about gettin' jiggy wit it. Unless the kids are now using "jiggy" to mean "slap another grown man across the face."
Yasmani Grandal slapped Tim Anderson Will Smith-style
Here's how it allegedly went down:
"July 9 the day before the MLB All-Star Game, the Cardinals were in town to pay the White Sox. Yasmani Grandal was not in the lineup that day. Yasmani Grandal walked down into the clubhouse and with some expletives thrown in there said, 'well eff this, if I'm not in the lineup, I'm going to start my break a day early. I'm getting out of here'…Tim Anderson was in the tub. Tim Anderson says well 'eff you, eff that, if he wants to get out of here now I'll pay for his flight and bring him there myself'…Yasmani Grandal walks over to Tim Anderson and slaps him across the face and they got into fight from there. They had to be separated."
So Anderson was not happy with Grandal wanting to skip out on the last White Sox game before the All-Star break and Grandal responded with a blow to the head.
UPDATE: For what it's worth, Grandal denies the report about a physical altercation, calling it "not real."
Anderson has been dealing with too many shots to the face lately.. And each time he's had salt poured in the wound.
With Ramirez, it was the meme-ification of being knocked out that drove him towards a cryptic tweet storm. Then a suspension twice as long as the Guardians player.
With Grandal, the salt may have come from the catcher's reaction to the fight.
"Yasmani Grandal was the one to go out and grab Tim Anderson and help him off the field because he was having such a hard time exiting the field," Riordan said. "[Riordan's source] thinks — and I trust him with this opinion, he would have talked with others about it as well — that that was Yas rubbing salt in the wound of his fractured relationship with Tim Anderson."
Yeah, having someone who slapped you across the face a few weeks before then be the one telling you to chill out doesn't sound like a good time.
To sum it all up, Tim Anderson is a mess, Yasmani Grandal is a mess and the White Sox are the biggest mess of all.
