Manny Machado has always played on the edge. That's part of what makes him great - the competitiveness, the fire, the willingness to do whatever it takes to win. But today's play has baseball talking, and not in a good way.
During the Padres victory, Machado appeared to kick a ball into foul territory while running to second base, gaining an extra base in the process. Was it intentional? Was it accidental? The replay suggests it wasn't as innocent as the third baseman would like us to believe.
Look, I get it. In the heat of competition, with everything moving at full speed, players are looking for any edge they can find. That's sports. That's the game within the game. But there's a line between gamesmanship and... well, let's just say this play is dancing right on that line.
The umpires didn't call it. Machado got to stay at second. The Padres went on to win. But that doesn't mean the play was clean. It just means the umps missed it, or decided it wasn't blatant enough to reverse.
Here's the thing about Manny Machado - he's talented enough that he doesn't need these kinds of plays. The man's a perennial All-Star, a Gold Glove third baseman, a force in the middle of the Padres' lineup. He's going to get his hits, make his plays, help his team win games. He doesn't need the extra help.
But that competitive fire sometimes burns a little too hot. We've seen it before with the infamous "I'm not Johnny Hustle" comments, with some questionable slides into second base over the years. Machado plays hard, but sometimes he plays past the line.
The opposing team was understandably furious. You would be too if you watched a runner kick a ball and get rewarded for it. Baseball has enough gray areas without adding intentional foot-to-baseball contact into the mix.
What makes this interesting is that it happened in a game the Padres won. If they'd lost, maybe this play becomes the rallying cry for the opposition, the smoking gun that proves Machado was trying to cheat. But they won, so it just becomes another controversial moment in a controversial player's career.
The baseball community on social media has been dissecting this play frame by frame, and the consensus isn't pretty. Most people see what everyone saw: a player making intentional contact with a ball to gain an advantage. Whether that's against the rules is for the umpires to decide. Whether it's against the of the game? That's a different conversation.
