Former Yankees Great Mark Teixeira Comes To The Defense Of Mike Fiers
Don’t count New York Yankees great Mark Teixeira among those who believe that former Houston Astros pitcher Mike Fiers should have kept quiet. Now a baseball analyst, Teixeira appeared on ESPN’s morning show, Get Up and addressed what has been dominating headlines this spring training. In particular, the former first baseman talked about the backlash that Fiers has been receiving from current and former players around the league.
Specifically, as MSN pointed out, he talked about what a couple of ex-Boston Red Sox players had to say. Both Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz have been far more critical of Fiers for alerting major league baseball to what the Astros were doing than they have the players on Houston who were using electronic devices and an elaborate kind of code employed by banging on trash cans.
Ortiz went so far as to call Fiers a “snitch” in a recent interview. Teixeira blasted the pair for the way they’ve talked about Fiers, and took more than a couple of swipes at Ortiz and Martinez in kind.
“I just think there are very few people out there that really even use the word snitch or rat anymore anyway. This isn’t Goodfellas. This is the real world. In the real world, you want bad things brought to light. You don’t want people cheating.”
Teixeira went on to say that players who are clean, want guys who aren’t, outed. The former Yankee also specifically mentioned “the steroid era.” This led some analysts to believe he was indirectly pointing at the fact that Ortiz did fail a drug test during his career for performance-enhancing substances. Because the positive test occurred during a period when MLB was still hammering out its policy towards that kind of violation, the former Red Sox star was never disciplined.
If the steroid era comment wasn’t enough for some to see what Teixeira meant, he went one step further. Later in the segment, he said it was interesting it was two (ex) Boston Red Sox players that were going after Fiers while having nothing to say about what the Astros had done.
"This isn't Goodfellas. This is the real world."@teixeiramark25 is not a fan of players calling Mike Fiers a "snitch." pic.twitter.com/RDND3zyK3g
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) February 24, 2020
NJ.com points out it’s a bit worse than just two ex-players from the same team ripping Mike Fiers publicly. Both Ortiz and Martinez are still on the Red Sox payroll as “special assistants.” Further, Boston has been under investigation by MLB for its own sign-stealing allegations which are very similar to what the Houston Astros were doing. Commissioner Rob Manfred is expected to release his report on their crimes and corresponding punishment by the end of the week.
