Would Chris Coghlan get some payback for his slide that ended Jung Ho Kang’s season? Manager Joe Maddon hoped not.
For at least one day Maddon got what he wanted, as Coghlan had two relatively uneventful at-bats.
“It was a good baseball play. There was nothing to cause retribution at all,” Maddon said before the Cubs lost 3-2 to the Pirates. “So I would hope not. For us it’s a dead issue and that’s it. I think the people involved, within the Pirates, they understand that.
“Others that may want to fan the flames are just fanning flames,” Maddon added. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
In the first inning of the Cubs’ Sept. 17 win at Pittsburgh, a Coghlan slide into second base to break up a double play resulted in Kang suffering a broken left leg and torn MCL.
When asked after Friday’s game if he expected any continuation from last week, Coghlan said “I feel at the end of the day that I play the game in a respectful, hard way.”
“It’s an unfortunate instance that it happened. I hate that he misses the whole year and it’s a significant injury and a big blow to them,” Coghlan said. “But I think those guys over there understand the way I play, and it wasn’t a dirty play.
“There’s a lot dirtier slides in this game than that one. It’s just that one was tough because of the position that he was in and the way the ball was hit. Hopefully they would respect that it is that, but if not you do what you’ve got to do.”
There were rumblings out of Pittsburgh that Maddon saying he heard it was only plantar fasciitis didn’t go over well around the Pirates. On Friday, Maddon explained that comment.
“It wasn’t my thought. It was coming from the Pirates’ side,” Maddon said. “That’s what I was hoping that it was, that it wasn’t that serious. There’s no way I would ever make something like that up. I wouldn’t even think about that. That’s what we had heard, and I thought ‘Oh good, then he’s not that badly hurt.’ That was my first thought, but then of course it wasn’t that. That’s all.”
