There are unwritten rules in baseball, and one of them is an eye for an eye, which led to the benches emptying during Tuesday night's Indians-Red Sox game.
The animosity between the clubs may have started in Monday night's game and then just carried over, according to USA Today.
The tension picked up early, and could have gone back to Monday night when the Red Sox's Ryan Kalish slid into catcher Carlos Santana, who left with a sprained knee. Beckett hit Shelly Duncan in the first and Shin-Soo Choo in the third. In the seventh, Cleveland's Justin Germano threw behind David Ortiz.
Things finally boiled over in the eighth inning, when the Indians' Jensen Lewis threw a pitch behind Adrian Beltre, who took exception.
The home plate umpire and Marson got between Beltre and Lewis in a hurry, but both benches cleared, and when Josh Beckett and Shelley Duncan started shouting at each other, things got heated, with Beckett having to be restrained. Just when things seemed to calm down, Terry Francona started back towards the Indians, in a shouting match with third base coach Steve Smith (likely just taking out his frustration with certain other third base coaches). By the time all was said and done, Beckett, Lewis, and Smith were all tossed from the game.
Here is video of the brawl courtesy of MLB.com.
UPDATE: Now with video on YouTube: