MLB veteran Eric O’Flaherty tells the story of memorable Carlos Gomez-Brian McCann fight
May 27, 2019, 2:00 PM | Updated: 2:07 pm
Everybody likes a good fight story. Especially when it’s a baseball fight that gets the benches and bullpens to empty onto the field.
Well, we’ve got one of those stories for you.
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Eric O’Flaherty, a 12-year veteran MLB pitcher with the Mariners, Braves, Mets and A’s, recently joined 710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock and Salk in-studio for an hour, and among the things the Walla Walla native talked about was one of the most memorable fights to happen in the big leagues over the past decade – a fight O’Flaherty was actually in a small way a part of.
It happened on Sept. 25, 2013 at Atlanta’s Turner Field, an incident you could refer to as the Carlos Gomez-Brian McCann fight. With one out in the first inning of a relatively meaningless game, then-Brewers outfielder Gomez drilled a home run off of Braves starter Paul Maholm, who had joined Atlanta just a few months prior in a trade. Gomez immediately stared down Maholm and started yelling at him, then continued to yell at other Braves players as he took his time going around the bases.
Until he got to home plate.
That’s where McCann was waiting for Gomez, refusing to let him step on the plate, and the two got into quite the argument that quickly devolved into a brouhaha.
So what going through the heads of the Braves players as the situation was unfolding?
“Everyone on our team is just like, ‘What is going on?’ We have no clue,” said O’Flaherty, who was out of action at the time due to Tommy John surgery.
It turned out Maholm and Gomez had some unfinished business from Maholm’s time with the Pittsburgh Pirates. And then Gomez ended up with some business with McCann, who did not take kindly to Gomez’s actions immediately following his home run.
“The best thing about B-Mac, Brian McCann, is he is the nicest guy in the world, but if he feels disrespected he could flip that switch in a hurry,” O’Flaherty said. “He’s one of my best friends on the planet, we’ve gotten into it plenty of times. He’s the nicest guy ever but he’s just has this rage inside of him that’s always ready. … B-Mac’s that guy that he doesn’t even know happened, he just saw red.”
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For the record, O’Flaherty says he has no ill-will for Gomez, now a member of the New York Mets.
“To be honest, I really like Carlos Gomez. I think he’s hilarious. I watch him play, he’s great. But in that moment it was like, ‘Dude.'”
Hear the full story from O’Flaherty in the player below, and watch the fight itself in the video embedded at the top of this post.
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