There were a lot of raised eyebrows around the baseball world when Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Archer called out David Ortiz for his bat flip Sunday night.
Ortiz’s post-home run actions are far from universally beloved — Archer’s rotation mate, David Price, is an outspoken Papi critic — but many didn’t think the 25-year-old right-hander was one to talk regarding such matters.
After all, Archer himself has been known to show what some might consider excessive emotion on the mound, most notably after a fourth-inning strikeout of Daniel Nava last June.
When asked about his bicep-kissing celebration Monday night, the young hurler brushed it off as a moment of youthful exuberance.
“I mean, I’ve gotten excited before,” Archer said, via WEEI.com, “and they blow that out of proportion, too, saying that I kissed my bicep. Man, but honestly, I was in the infant stages of my career there — that was literally, like, my fifth start of my career. People say, ‘You should act like you’ve been there before.’ At that time in my career, I had never been there.”
An Ortiz-Rays rematch won’t come until Aug. 29, when the Red Sox open a four-game series at Tropicana Field.
