Zack Greinke once came to the defense of Nyjer Morgan, implied pitchers shouldn't "stare people down"

Zack Greinke talked to press and True Blue LA got some further insight from the injured Dodger pitcher.

Greinke, may or may not hold any grudges, but at least he's rational when it comes to Carlos Quentin's punishment, even in light of his own 8 week injury. Basically, it was the biggest penalty laid down on by the league, so regardless of if it was the worst offense ever, it was treated like it was.

"A lot of times I feel other sports are too tough with their fines and suspensions. I don't know which sport does it properly, but that's just how it's always been done," Greinke said. "I think it's the most anyone has every[sic] been suspended (for charging the mound), so to expect anything more than that would be pretty crazy, I would think."

What's especially interesting is how Greinke does not want to come clean about what he said to antagonize Carlos Quentin immediately after the beaning.

"I'm just not going to get involved in that conversation at all. I know you guys have to do your jobs and get information, but I just don't think it's right to bring everything through," Greinke said. "I made a mistake one time talking about Carpenter, but I felt bad about that afterwards. It's just not anyone else's business."

Ignoring the fact that Greinke claims to know that it's somebody's job to get him to speak and later claims it to be nobody's business, he does mention the Chris Carpenter incident.

If you don't recall this incident, Zack Greinke was once on the Brewers and a teammate of Nyjer Morgan. Morgan in 2011 was struck out by Chris Carpenter (not beaned) and, after some words and some thrown gum, made a move towards the mound, clearing the benches.

This was an incident where the pitcher did exactly his job, struck out a batter and the batter behaves appears to behave completely irrationally (assuming just for that second that Nyjer Morgan is or ever was a rational person).

Amazingly, Zack Greinke came to Nyjer Morgan's defense in this case. (emphasis mine)

"I don't know," Greinke said. "They think [Chris Carpenter's] presence, his attitude out there sometimes is like a phony attitude. But ... and then he yells at people. He just stares people down and stuff. And most pitchers just don't do that.

"And when guys do [stare people down], I guess some hitters get mad. Some hitters do it to pitchers. But when you do that some people will get made[sic]. There's other pitchers in the league that do it, but I don't know, a lot of guys on our team don't like Carpenter."

While the bigger original lesson may have been forgotten (namely, if two players stare each other down, people are bound to get mad), to Greinke's credit, he does appear to be taking the advice of Tony LaRussa, at least when it comes to comments made after heated incidents:

[Tony Larussa on Greinke's comments:] "So I think the Brewers should take care of their players and their comments and not be concerned about other players' comments. If they had Chris Carpenter, they would be cheering for him and believing in him and they would not be allowing somebody who was a teammate to make a crack like that.

In any case, there was once a time that Zack Greinke felt that it was understandable that a batter might get angry enough to attempt to get physical if stared down. Did Greinke stare down Quentin? Did Greinke yell something at Quentin to further antagonize the situation? Well, that's apparently not anybody else's business anymore.

Just goes to show that just about anything can be justified depending on who's team you're on.