"Bad blood" USA v China baseball...

[Dakota]

Did any of you see that? It turned into quite a spectacle... malicious plowing over of the catcher, retaliation bean ball right to the ear, ejections, etc.

At first, you might think this was China and USA international rivalry going at it, until you look at who the manager was for the Chinese team.

It seemed to have started with normal, but hard-nosed play that resulted in a couple of hit batters and an F2 getting run over, knocking the Chinese F2 out of the game (hard hit, but didn't look malicious to me).

It escalated to the malicious contact taking out the second F2, followed by the bean ball pitch to the ear of the first runner who hit the first F2.

Obviously, I don't know the international baseball rules on malicious contact, so I can't say whether the plate umpire handled things correctly.