The San Diego Padres president and CEO said Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke intentionally threw at Carlos Quentin and that he should not have lowered his shoulder when Quentin charged the mound, precipitating a brawl last week that left Greinke with a broken collarbone that will sideline him for two months.

In a 4-minute, 29-second clip of a recent talk with Padres season-ticket holders obtained by Yahoo! Sports, Tom Garfinkel outlined the festering history between Greinke and Quentin and concluded the fastball that hit Quentin's arm was deliberate despite Greinke's claims otherwise.

"He threw at him on purpose, OK?" Garfinkel told an estimated crowd of 40 or 50 at Petco Park on Friday, a day after the fight. "That's what happened. They can say 3-and-2 count, 2-1 game, no one does that. Zack Greinke is a different kind of guy. Anyone seen 'Rain Man'? He's a very smart guy."

Garfinkel went on to reference Greinke's social-anxiety disorder, a comment he told Yahoo!

Another baseball player allegedly drove drunk Tuesday. This wasn't just dawdling near the legally acceptable line of intoxication. This was full-blown, God's own drunk, nearly three times the legal limit, the sort of drunk a man can get when the consequences in his state are laughable and those at his workplace nonexistent.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo will pay the government $778 in fines, or .0001 of his salary this season, for filling himself so full of beer that he blew a 0.22 blood-alcohol level and proceeded to swerve his heavy-duty Ford F-150 in and out of lanes, according to a police report. He could also face a nominal charge from the Brewers for breaking curfew. His penalties will end there. Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo faces a DUI charge after getting arrested on Tuesday morning. (AP)

And, once again, Major League Baseball will look like it doesn't care about drunk driving. It does. It has to. There is no good argument for driving drunk. None. Ever. Player after player getting arrested for DUI does nothing but reflect poorly on the sport. Gallardo is

MLB collectively honors Jackie Robinson on Monday, the 66th anniversary of his major league debut. (AP)

The most horrifying realization gleaned from "42," the new Jackie Robinson biopic, isn't how screwed up our country was back in 1947. It's how sports, once a place for great social change, continue to foster an environment in which the ugliest part of the movie still exists today.

Almost everywhere in modern America, the long-held intolerance toward gays has disappeared. We have gay politicians, gay actors and gay teachers. We have gay marriage in nine states and our nation's capital. The military abolished the don't-ask, don't-tell policy. Progress abounds.

Sports, on the other hand, keeps its closet padlocked.

Yes, there is Orlando Cruz, the boxer, and Robbie Rodgers, the soccer player. And the great work of Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo in the NFL is at least giving a hint to players that coming out would be accepted. But among the four major sports, there remains not a single active player willing to sacrifice everything – not just his privacy but the identity he

San Diego Padres outfielder Carlos Quentin will appeal the eight-game suspension he received after inciting a brawl during which Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke broke his left collarbone.

After Greinke hit Quentin on the arm with a 3-2 pitch in the sixth inning of a one-run game, the 30-year-old bull-rushed the mound at Petco Park. Greinke threw his glove off, stood his ground and got trucked, swallowed by a pile of Dodgers and Padres who cleared the benches.

Greinke will have surgery and is expected to be sidelined for around two months.

[Related: A-Rod reportedly bought Biogenesis documents]

Eight games, meanwhile, is among the stiffer penalties MLB has assessed for a player charging the mound – equal to what Nyjer Morgan received in Sept. 2010.

Major League Baseball, which announced the suspension and appeal Friday night, wanted to ensure Quentin missed the Padres' series with the Dodgers that begins Monday – and a source expects the appeal to be

The shenanigans started with an ill-advised mound charge. They ended with a superstar's threat: "We'll see, bitch." And in between, a brawl unspooled, a $147 million pitcher broke his collarbone, a manager erupted and a feud unlikely to abate anytime soon mushroomed into the biggest to-do of the young baseball season.

Oh, fertilizer.

There is no shame aping a phrase from the great Vin Scully when it so appropriately describes what happened Thursday night at Petco Park: Los Angeles Dodgers star Zack Greinke broke his left collarbone trying to take on San Diego Padres outfielder/linebacker Carlos Quentin, who charged the mound to extricate years of pent-up frustration over being hit by Greinke twice before.

Benches emptied, the teams did a do-si-do and it seemed to calm down until Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp found out the Greinke-Quentin collision left the right-hander clutching his clavicle on the way to an X-ray machine. Kemp proceeded to drop a fleet of

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Early this spring, James Shields and David Price were texting like they always do. For the first time in five years, they weren't in camp together, weren't wearing matching uniforms, weren't even in the same state. Price wanted to update Shields about the latest antics at Tampa Bay Rays camp. And Shields wanted to let Price know what life is like outside the comfort of the Rays bubble.

In James Shields, the Royals weren't just seeking a quality pitcher but also a culture change. (Getty Images)"It's different here," he said, and it wasn't a slight to his new team, the Kansas City Royals, as much as it was a truth. Everywhere is different than Tampa Bay, and especially Kansas City, which has seen one winning season and 12 with 90 or more losses since the 1994 strike. He was going to change things, he told Price. He needed to.

For an organization run by quants, the Rays' clubhouse reflects a very different sentiment: a deep, strong belief in the power of team chemistry, a piece of which the Royals believed they were buying when they gave up Wil Myers, arguably the best

Justin Upton didn't take long to get comfortable in Atlanta's lineup. (Getty Images)

Sometime during his first six seasons, Justin Upton earned a reputation as a loafer. The Atlanta Braves understood this when they traded for him this offseason. They understood, too, a very important distinction: such reputations often get assigned erroneously and stick unfairly.

Justin Upton is not a loafer, was not a loafer and, absent some sort of change in his makeup, never will be a loafer. The Braves believed this, which is why they were downright giddy when it became apparent the Arizona Diamondbacks would deal Upton because of concerns about his effort. And though Braves officials felt their intuition on Upton correct from the moment he arrived at camp this spring, they look back now on March 16 as a seminal moment.

It was more than halfway through spring training. Restlessness pervaded Braves camp. Why is the axiom that spring stats mean nothing true? Because by the middle, everyone just wants to go golfing or go home. Upton happened to be playing that day against

This week at Koshien, the twice-a-year national high school baseball tournament that is to Japan what the World Series is to American baseball fans, a 16-year-old boy named Tomohiro Anraku threw 772 pitches. During the final game Wednesday, Anraku, whose fastball reached 94 mph earlier in the tournament, labored to crack 80. It was his third consecutive day starting a game and his fourth in five days, and those came after his first start of the tournament, in which he threw 232 pitches over 13 innings. Tomohiro Anraku delivers a pitch during Koshien. (AP)

When word of Anraku's exploits filtered out from Koshien Stadium, the reaction depended on proximity. Nearby, in the Japanese baseball culture that equates pitch count with superiority, Anraku was a hero. Far away, in an American baseball culture that has seen more elbows and shoulders blow out than ever before, Anraku was the picture of excess. For a man who bridges the societies, Anraku represented something much more unsavory. 

"This is child abuse," said Don Nomura, a longtime