The World Baseball Classic has its signature moment, and it's nothing like commissioner Bud Selig envisioned.
A wild (bordering on insane) brawl broke out during the ninth inning of Saturday's game between Canada and Mexico. After a series of hard takeout slides, a home plate collision involving Karim Garcia and Canadian catcher Chris Robinson, and Robinson in turn getting beaned by Dennys Reyes, both benches had been warned by the umpiring crew to cut it out. But things still boiled over after Robinson led-off the ninth inning with a bunt single despite Canada leading by six runs.
In baseball, that's a an unwritten no-no, though the WBC rules certainly encourage such strategy since their main tiebreaker in pool play is run differential. Whether or not it was strategy on Robinson's part is something only he knows at this point. But either way, Mexico infielder Luis Cruz could be seen on replays instructing pitcher Arnold Leon to plunk the following hitter, Rene Tosoni.
He did, and all heck broke loose with both benches emptying and several punches being thrown by many different players on both sides.
Leon and Tosoni were among the seven players ejected. Once things settled down, which took a while, another situation developed between players from Canada and fans from Mexico. It appeared on television as though some players were taunting the fans by pointing at their uniforms as they walked off the field. A numbers of fans then began throwing objects towards them, with a bottle of some sort striking one of Canada's coaches in the head. His injury didn't appear to be serious.
Several fans were ejected at that point, and another was ejected a little later when he threw a foul ball back on the field that nearly struck Canada's first base coach Larry Walker.
It was a wild scene. For a minute it almost seemed like the game should be stopped, but it was completed with Canada winning 10-3.
Yahoo! Sports Jeff Passan is on scene in Phoenix and was witness to this melee. We're sure he'll have more information as it becomes available. You can follow him on Twitter @JeffPassan.
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