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Tommy Pham, back from slap suspension, adds blame to commissioner Mike Trout

The wild fantasy football feud that has taken over Major League Baseball doesn’t stop with just Tommy Pham and Joc Pederson.

It’s also far from over, even after Pham served his three-game suspension.

The incident now apparently includes Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout, otherwise known as the “worst commissioner in fantasy sports.”

If Trout would have simply run the league, Pham said jokingly, there wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.

“Trout did a terrible job, man,” Pham said Tuesday, via The Athletic. “Trout’s the worst commissioner in fantasy sports. Because he allowed a lot of this s**t go on and he could’ve solved it all … Nobody wanted to be commissioner. I didn’t want to be the f***ing commissioner. I’ve got other s**t to do. He didn’t want to do it, we put it on him.

“It was kind of our fault too, because we made him commissioner.”

Tommy Pham returns after 3-game suspension

Pham returned from his three-game suspension on Tuesday night, though he didn’t play in the Cincinnati Reds’ series opener against the Boston Red Sox due to calf tightness.

The incident started last week, when Pham went and slapped Pederson before their game on Friday over a fantasy football dispute.

Apparently, Pham was mad about injured reserve rules in their league and had accused Pederson of cheating in a group chat. Pederson, according to Pham, also said “some disrespectful s**t” in that group chat about Pham.

The incident likely took place during the 2020-21 NFL season, too, and Pederson said Pham actually left the league early and hadn’t talked to him again until Friday’s altercation.

Why he held onto a grudge for that long isn’t really clear to anyone, including Pederson — who had told Pham that “it was meant to be all fun and games. No hard feelings.”

Even on Friday when Pham slapped Pederson, he said there wasn’t much to it.

“There was no real argument,” Pederson said. “He kinda came up and said, ‘You remember from last year?’ I said, ‘Fantasy Football?’ He said, ‘Yeah” and … yeah.”

Pham’s account on Tuesday was, well, similar.

“I said, ‘I didn’t forget about that s**t,’” Pham said, via The Athletic. “And I walked up to him and slapped him.”

Trout didn’t comment about his role in the feud to The Athletic.

“That’s something you really just put behind you,” Pham said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Everyone in that group chat, everybody knows. I’ve had some of those guys reach out to me. They already know what’s up.”

Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout
Fantasy football commissioner Mike Trout is apparently partially to blame for Tommy Pham's slap on Joc Pederson. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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