When Elliot Johnson of the Tampa Bay Rays broke the wrist of the Yankees’ catcher, Francisco Cervelli, in a violent collision at the plate last Saturday, it set an aggressive tone for the next meeting between the teams. The intensity boiled over in the early innings at Al Lang Field on Wednesday.

Three players and two coaches were ejected for separate incidents — a hit batter in the first inning and a hard slide at second base by Shelley Duncan in the second, which caused both benches to empty. The Yankees and the Rays meet again on Saturday and play six series during the regular season.

“Hopefully it’s under the rug,” said Tampa Bay’s Jonny Gomes, who sprinted in from right field to tackle Duncan at second base. “But to tell you the truth, I kind of doubt it. I just hope nobody gets hurt.”

With two on and two out in the bottom of the first, Yankees starter Heath Phillips hit Rays third baseman Evan Longoria with a 1-1 fastball. The pitch was high and at Longoria’s chest, but it nicked his jersey and was caught by the catcher, Jorge Posada.

“It just barely hit me,” Longoria said. “I didn’t feel like it was intentional.”

The plate umpire Chad Fairchild disagreed, ejecting Phillips immediately. Duncan, who had said over the weekend that he intended to play hard, was the leadoff man in the top of the second and hit a soft liner toward third.

Longoria said he lost the ball in the glare off the T-shirts in the stands, and it glanced off his glove, rolling about 15 feet up the line. Duncan rounded first base hard and charged toward second baseman Akinori Iwamura.

“The ball beat me by quite a bit,” Duncan said. “When you’re out by a mile, sometimes you have two things to do: take a weird slide around him to be safe, or slide hard into his glove. I went hard into his glove.”

Duncan did not dislodge the ball with his spikes, and though Iwamura was not hurt, he said he had a small cut on his knee. Duncan was called out and ejected from the game, as were Gomes and two Yankees coaches, Kevin Long and Bobby Meacham.

“He was trying to inflict some pain on Aki,” Gomes said of Duncan and Iwamura, adding later, “Shelley Duncan went in the paper and said he was going to do this. This was premeditated on his part. He said if he had the opportunity to go in hard, he was going to do it. To me, that made it worse.”

Duncan said he was not hurt by the charging Gomes — “I felt a bump,” he said — and he made no apologies for his style of play. He said the Rays showed on Saturday that exhibition games should be intense.

“You see their intensity level, and you just try to match it,” Duncan said. “When they play as hard as they do — which I like — that steps up your game. That awakens you a little bit. This isn’t just going-through-the-motions. This is baseball. You play hard.”

Phillips said he was not throwing at Longoria, and Posada agreed. But Posada did not defend Duncan’s slide when asked what he thought of it.

“You’ve got to ask Shelley,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

-NewYorkTimes

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