Tony La Russa isn’t managing baseball games anymore, but he’s still picking fights and kicking dirt.
The Diamondbacks’ top baseball executive barged into the Pirates broadcast booth in the middle of a game on Tuesday to scold announcer Greg Brown for saying La Russa was a manager who believed in retaliating for players getting hit by pitches.
The topic came up after the Pirates’ Arquimedes Caminero hit Arizona players Nick Ahmed and Jean Segura. La Russa later explained his booth invasion to the Arizona Republic.
“I never have stood for inaccuracies,” La Russa said, “so I corrected the inaccuracies.
“It’s about taking responsibility. If you’re going to speak untruths then you’re going to get challenged and you should be responsible for what you say. I am. I reacted.”
Brown addressed the dispute on the air on Thursday. He said he spoke to La Russa away from the cameras, out of sight and so the telecast wouldn’t be interrupted.
“I didn’t speak any untruths. I spoke completely accurately, and I’ll stand by every word I said,” Brown said, via Yahoo Sports. “Again, I didn’t want it to get to this point. I don’t want to get in any more squabbles, but I need to tell my side of the story. And that’s that.”