Stare at the walls, etc. From the SF Chronicle’s scariest haircut, Ray Ratto.
Milton Bradley flied to right off Boof Bonser to begin the fourth inning, returned to the dugout and, according to him, he tossed his batting gloves onto a shelf in the dugout. It hit a cup of coffee, the contents of which splashed the shirt, pants, cap and glove of Oakland starter Esteban Loaiza, the owner of the cup. Sometime later, according to Loaiza, hitting coach Gerald Perry said something to Bradley, Bradley said something back, Loaiza stepped between them to keep the peace, and then everyone went about their day.
“I just put my gloves up there, and it hit the cup and some of it spilled on Loaiza,” Bradley said. “It was just a mistake. Then Gerald said something about my mama, and I said something about his mama, and then we both apologized. No big deal.”
“It was an accident,” Loaiza said. “He threw the batting gloves up there and the coffee landed on me. That’s just baseball. You never know what will happen on the field or in the dugout. It didn’t bother me. I got another uniform and went back to work.”
And the refill?
“Bobby (Crosby) hooked me up there. It was early in the morning. You gotta wake up quick.”
And the peacemaking?
“It’s baseball. There’s a lot of adrenaline going on. Everyone wants to do right and do well. It just got a little bit talkative. Nothing personal. Nothing bad. We just want to win. Milton Bradley wants to do a great job. Gerald Perry wants to help him.
“I’m a veteran,” Loaiza said. “I knew what was going on. I just wanted to stop them., you can’t get in a fight. We’ve been together 162 games, we just have to be together three more weeks.”
The final act in our little playlet happened in the seventh, with Bradley in the on-deck circle while Mark Kotsay was preparing to win the game with his inside-the-park home run. A fan in the first row, who identified himself as Marty Davis of Minneapolis, got into a chat with Bradley with the Great Caffeine Incident as the point of discussion.
“I told him you shouldn’t be spilling coffee on your pitcher like that,” Davis told Your Chronicle’s John Shea of his running hecklage. “I heard that’s what happened (in the dugout). He was f-ing me. He told me, ‘Don’t make me come up there.’ I said, ‘Milton, you’ve got to control your temper.’ He kept f-ing me. He said, ‘Get outta my face.’ I said no. It’s just like they treat our players in Oakland.”