Rougned Odor says ‘people who don’t know baseball’ have bad impression of him – CBSSports.com

Back on May 15, the Blue Jays and Rangers got into a bit of a tussle. Specifically, Rougned Odor clocked Jose Bautista with one of the hardest and well-landed punches you’ll ever see in a Major League Baseball fight. As if you haven’t seen it a million times by now, the footage!

Regarding the fight and much more, ESPN Deportes’ Marly Rivera has a good interview with Odor that ran Thursday morning. For the full interview, definitely hop over there. For our purposes, we’re gonna dig in here:

Has this incident given people the wrong impression of who you are? Maybe. After what happened, people who don’t know baseball may have a bad impression of me, but people who know baseball do know that those things are a part of the game. Perhaps he was wrong, and perhaps I was also wrong.

I love the built-in shade that anyone who disagrees with his actions is someone who doesn’t know anything about baseball. That’s kind of foolproof in a way, no? In fact, here’s a good boilerplate on how to proceed in instances where someone might come after your views:

Hey, do you think some people might disagree with you?

Yeah, certainly there are some stupid people out there who might disagree.

That’s awesome.

Seriously, though, a key part of this discussion is the final sentence there by Odor. They were probably both a little bit wrong while also being human beings playing an intense game with emotions running high. That certainly doesn’t condone Bautista’s slide or Odor’s punch, but it’s pretty easy to see how and why both things happened.

Related: If the playoffs started right now, the Rangers would be the top AL seed, sitting in the ALDS and awaiting the winner of the Wild Card game between the Red Sox and … the Toronto Blue Jays. Keep this in line, Baseball Gods.