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MLB

Tommy Pham gets three game suspension

MLB suspends Tommy Pham for three games for slapping Joc Pederson over a dispute stemming from a fantasy football league last year

Jeffrey May
Update:
MLB suspends Tommy Pham for three games for slapping Joc Pederson over a dispute stemming from a fantasy football league last year
Kevin SousaUSA TODAY Sports

In a story that moves from the stupid to the ridiculous, Tommy Pham has spoken out, offering more details to the incident that occurred between him and Joc Pederson during batting practice before Friday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.

Initially, details were thin on the ground. Pederson told of a dispute stemming from a fantasy football league that the two of them were members of last season, but Pham made no statement. After investigating fully, the MLB has decided to suspend Pham for three games, and now he offers more detail on the story.

Perhaps surprisingly, the two players’ accounts of the root of the issue are pretty much in line with each other. The main difference is that Pham thinks that it is somehow justified to slap someone over nothing. And that is what fantasy football is: nothing. That is why it is called “fantasy”.

Pham sees it differently, referring to the prize money on the line, saying, “F***ing with my money and you’re going to say some disrespectful s***, there’s a code to this.”

The disrespect that Pham referred to is in relation to a GIF that Pederson sent to the group chat, ribbing the Padres for their poor play at the time. Pham called it out and Pederson apologized, saying that he was friends with several Padres players in the group chat and didn’t mean any disrespect. That should have been the end of it, if reasonable adults were involved. But apparently not.

A few weeks later, Pham left the fantasy league, and now, reportedly over a year after the fact, he approached Pederson and slapped him in the face. Lucky for Pham, Pederson has been a pretty nice guy about it all. Had he tried that with someone of a different era, say Nolan Ryan or Kirk Gibson, Pham would be drinking his meals through a straw.

To complete the farce, Pham has some illusion that he is some kind of gambling kingpin, saying, “This was strictly just about some money or winning some money. I’m a big dog in Vegas. I’m a high roller at many casinos.

Well, high roller, you just lost $120,000 over a joke that wasn’t directed at you and the guy apologized for. Sounds like you really are a big dog indeed.

There is a reason that many professional athletes are bankrupt shortly after their careers end, and you just demonstrated it in glorious technicolor. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.