Dalton Rushing outburst, postgame response show Dodgers have been coddling him all along

Even when Dalton Rushing was insulting other teams' players, making illegal slides, showing up umpires, and so on, there was a contingent of Los Angeles Dodgers fans — bigger than it had any right to be — happy to stand by him.

The Dodgers are a buttoned-up bunch; Rushing defenders insisted he was refreshing because he played with his emotions on his sleeve. Everyone else was just being too soft.

But that was when everything Rushing did was directed toward other teams — the Colorado Rockies, the San Francisco Giants, the Chicago Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates ... the list continues to grow. On Wednesday night, he made the rather unwise decision to turn on that act with his own teammate. And not just any teammate. Shohei Ohtani.

The evening involved Rushing looking frustrated with Ohtani for what he certainly thought was a wild pitch but the scorers ruled a passed ball, then Rushing getting visibly upset when Ohtani challenged a borderline pitch called a ball (Ohtani ended up being right) — all by the end of the second inning.

The two had an extended conversation on the mound, which featured Ohtani looking just about as mad as Dodgers fans have ever seen him. When he came back out for the third inning, he was calling his own pitches.

After that difficult second inning with Ohtani, all of Freddie Freeman, Dave Roberts, Mark Prior, and the Dodgers' mental skills coach (?) were seen talking with Rushing in the dugout in the top of the third. Roberts put his arm around Rushing and spoke with him at length.

Rushing was appropriately chastened after the game. "It's embarrassing that I need support like that," he said "I'm a grown man. It's a pretty tough pill to swallow, both sides of the ball. Not a great showing. It hasn't been great as of late. I'm going to get better."

Some fans continued to stand by him, praising him for taking accountability. That's all well and good, but haven't we heard all of this before?

Dalton Rushing hasn't learned anything despite multiple wrist slaps from the Dodgers

"I'm going to be better" is basically what Rushing said when he broke his silence on the string of bad publicity that made him Public Enemy No. 1 in the first place. He said he didn't want to be known as a bad guy. It was just that he once played football, too, and sometimes he brought that bulldog mentality to baseball.

Yeah, that was a thin excuse then, and it's even thinner now.

Rushing can't claim to basically black out when he plays — an excuse Freddie Freeman literally, actually made for him — act out of line, and then expect an apology in the aftermath to hold any weight at all. Rookie or not, Rushing is still a 25-year-old adult. The babying some Dodgers fans have been doing of him is unacceptable.

Dodgers fans aren't the only ones guilty of it, though; the Dodgers clearly are, too. The party line has been something as follows: "We love that Dalton plays with some fire in the belly and we don't want to beat that out of him. He just needs to be more careful."

That's the kind of gentle parenting that doesn't work. It has provably not worked with Rushing.

LA clearly loves their former No. 1 prospect and sees real potential in him — maybe even superstar potential. Why else would they have kept him all this time despite not actually having a place to put him full-time? That's fine. It's sort of good, even, given how small a percentage of Dodgers position players are homegrown.

But if Rushing expects to stay a Dodger, he needs to act like a Dodger. Not showing up the literal greatest baseball player of all time is baseline stuff, and Rushing isn't even on that level. Dave Roberts and the Dodgers need to do a lot more than give Rushing a cuddle and talk him down from his tantrums slowly, and Rushing needs to actually keep his word and do some growing up.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow