Dalton Rushing clearly forgot promise to behave with dirty play in Dodgers-Pirates opener

While it might be true that baseball media and Los Angeles Dodgers haters have started looking for any reason to hate on Dalton Rushing, it's also true that his behavior has been deserving of criticism.

The only incident that we might give him some leeway for is the exaggerated timeout. Sure, it was a little obnoxious, but it ultimately harmless. The rest, though — the name-calling, the sketchy baserunning, the disregard for other players — we shouldn't be making excuses for.

After a string of viral incidents that quickly turned Rushing into one of the game's biggest villains, he said that he didn't want to be known as a bad guy and vowed to be more mindful of his conduct on the field. Dave Roberts and some Dodgers players said they didn't want to take the fire out of his game but still advised him to tone it down.

To Rushing's credit, he hadn't done anything untoward (or been caught doing anything untoward) since that spree earlier this season. And then he had to go and ruin it on Tuesday night.

With the Pittsburgh Pirates up by a run in the fifth, Alex Freeland hit a ground ball toward right field. Brandon Lowe fielded and flipped it to Jared Triolo covering second. Rushing, hustling from first base, tried to break up the double play the old-fashioned way ... with a slide straight into Triolo's legs.

Freeland was called safe at first, but Rushing's slide was ruled illegal and the umpires granted Pittsburgh the double play.

Dalton Rushing acted up again during Dodgers-Pirates opener with illegal slide

Add Pirates fans to the ever-growing list of fanbases that hate Rushing. Anyone would've been up in arms about that slide, which put Rushing at least a foot off the bag, but Pirates fans were even more disquieted because of the fact that Triolo has already missed about a month this season because of a knee injury.

Dodgers fans hate Manny Machado for pulling exactly this kind of stuff as a Padre, so why are some fans defending Rushing and pretending like everyone else is just too soft?

It might've been somehow less disappointing if Rushing had never apologized and vowed to be better, because he insisted he didn't want to be known as a bad guy, and then he turned around and did what's widely recognized as a hallmark move for a dirty player. Just give it a rest, man.

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