Tommy Pham drama vs Brewers proves he's simply not a Dodgers trade target

Chicago White Sox v Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago White Sox v Milwaukee Brewers | Stacy Revere/GettyImages

Whenever full-on brawls happen in baseball, fans can usually expect that they'll be meme'd into the ground and blasted across every form of social media one could think of. We all remember Bryce Harper trying and failing to throw his helmet at Hunter Strickland while charging the mound, Rougned Odor punching Jose Bautista in the face, and José Ramirez ... punching Tim Anderson in the face (that one thanks, in part, to an instantly iconic call by Tom Hamilton) for their incredible theater, but also because they were thrilling outbursts of emotion in what's historically a rather austere game.

The Dodgers avoid brawling at all costs. They got closer to it than they have in a long time earlier this season, after a heated exchange between Will Smith and Jurickson Profar, which had both the Dodgers and Padres benches emptying, but on the whole they prefer to keep things clean and avoid drama. It's unlikely that we'll ever see a Dodger throw a punch as devastating as Ramirez's.

This weekend, a player who's been connected to the Dodgers as a possible trade candidate to bolster the outfield got into a near-dustup of his own. Tommy Pham, who's been hitting pretty well for the White Sox, was prepared to take on the entire Brewers bench on Sunday, basically rendering the possibility of him coming over to LA dead in the water.

Tommy Pham's near-brawl with the Brewers might've preemptively closed the door on a Dodgers trade at the deadline

Pham was thrown out at the plate trying to score from third on a sac fly. As he walked back to the dugout, Brewers catcher William Contreras started jawing, and Pham clearly couldn't abide. He talked back, and he had to be held back by multiple teammates to keep him from charging the dugout alone. Pham was almost hilariously heated, walking off the aggression by shadowboxing his anger out a little in the infield, just to prove how willing he was to fight.

The White Sox went on to lose 6-3, and Pham said in a postgame interview, "There’s a reason why I do all kinds of fighting in the offseason... because I’m prepared to f— somebody up." That definitely doesn't sound like someone who would be great Dodger material.

The Dodgers have had a couple of known hotheads on the roster that were (mostly) subdued when they put on the uniform, but as the darlings of MLB with a squeaky-clean image to protect, it seems very unlikely that they'll welcome in a player who seems to be itching for a good fight.

Schedule