Tampabay.com
MARCH 13, 2008

Maddon: MLB will do right thing (suspend Duncan, not Gomes)

Rays manager Joe Maddon said he has "full faith" Major League Baseball will make the right decisions on disciplinary action from Wednesday's incidents - which you can read as a suspension for New York's Shelley Duncan and not for Tampa Bay's Jonny Gomes.

"I will let MLB do their job. Somebody asked me if I thought it was a suspendable offense and I said yes, but I'm going to stay out of that,'' Maddon said. "It's up to MLB to create the sanctions they deem necessary at this point and I have full faith they will come down with the proper decision. ...

"I think if you look at the whole situation appropriately I don't think what Jon did was wrong. I think what Jon did was right. And I would really challenge anybody on any level, whether it's professional sports or it's your buddy, what you would do under those same set of circumstances. I think that's in-bred in the American people, it's in-bred within our nature. You're going to fight for your buddy under those circumstances. Especially when it was so blatantly wrong what was done against him.''

Maddon also said he felt just as strongly about Duncan's actions on Thursday as he did when they happened Wednesday, no matter what the Yankees say or think about it:
"I stand by what we said. I stand by our interpretation of the play. I will not back down for a minute. I know we are right in this regard, so it's up to them to, whether spin it the way they would like to spin it, that is entirely up to them. Everybody that saw it knows what happened. It's indisputable what happened. So bring on the spin doctors.''

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