MILWAUKEE – Brewers reliever Abner Uribe apologized to everybody but the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday after making lewd gestures toward the visitors’ dugout in the eighth inning of Milwaukee’s 6-0 win at American Family Field.
Uribe, a self-described high-intensity right-hander with a fastball to match, was pitching with a six-run lead when he worked around a two-out walk and a single by getting a called strike three against Alec Burleson. Uribe pounded his chest, pointed to the sky and then turned to the Cardinals’ dugout and gestured several times in a way Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy later described as “unacceptable.”
Uribe didn’t immediately notice that Burleson had challenged the called strike. The strikeout stood upon review.
"It's just unacceptable. I don't know what got over him,” Murphy said. “I mean, he's been an emotional guy, but that kind of thing, that's just not how we do things, and I was embarrassed by it. Why are we doing it in a 6-0 game? What are we doing there? There must be something deeper that I don't know about.
“I love the kid. Believe me, I love the kid. There's so much good in this kid. He's been so great for us in so many ways. But that's unacceptable.”
Uribe addressed reporters with translator Daniel de Mondesert.
“First and foremost, everyone here knows me and knows who I am, and knows I have a bit of a history of being emotional out there,” Uribe said. “I owe an apology to the Brewers, I owe an apology to my teammates, to my manager, all the bosses of the team. I understand that’s unacceptable to go out there and react in a way like that.”
But he then turned his ire toward Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol for something Uribe says he saw during Monday’s series opener, a 5-1 Brewers win behind Jacob Misiorowski’s 12 strikeouts and 103 mph heat.
“I don’t think it’s professional for their manager to be making signs toward our dugout saying that he’s going to be hitting guys,” Uribe said. “There’s an event that occurred during the practice today, too, and I don’t think that’s right. I have my teammates’ back, always.”
Asked to explain what happened during Tuesday’s batting practice, Uribe said, “I don’t have any comments toward that.”
And asked for more detail about what he believes he saw from Marmol, Uribe only said that it was something during Monday’s game. He did not elaborate about specific circumstances.
“There was a sign he was doing every time ‘Yeli’ [Christian Yelich] or William [Contreras] was up to the plate,” Uribe said. “There’s a gesture he was making in the dugout. ... I don’t think it’s very professional for them to be making gestures like that, and I don’t think it’s right for any of my guys to be going out there with any fear in their heads that we may be getting thrown at, or they can’t play the game they want to be able to play.”
Uribe made his comments after the visitors' clubhouse had closed to reporters, but when informed of the allegations, the Cardinals denied them.
Marmol did notice that Murphy took action as soon as Uribe made it back to the Brewers’ dugout.
“It looked like their team and Murph was handling it on their side,” Marmol said. “That’s their player, we will handle ours, but it seemed like they were taking care of it.”
Uribe said there was no history between the teams from their meeting at Busch Stadium earlier this month, a series split that ended with a Milwaukee win that began a current 14-4 run that propelled the Brewers from fifth place to first in the National League Central. But there were some words earlier in the eighth inning, when Uribe threw one fastball high and tight to Cardinals catcher Iván Herrera and the two had a brief exchange.
"It’s not fun if you throw a 2-0 heater in here up to your head. I said, ‘Keep it down,’ and he started laughing,” Herrera said. “I didn’t do anything crazy. … I feel like it was just disrespectful to the entire team, what he did. I hope we take care of it and we move on.
“It’s just part of the game, but I don’t think you can do that to a whole team. If you have an issue with me, you come tell me. You had the chance to do that to me, I was at second [base], and you didn’t, so don’t disrespect our team. We’re not going to do that, so you know, go from there."
By the time Murphy answered questions about an otherwise uplifting Brewers win, in which Brewers left-hander Kyle Harrison lowered his ERA to 1.57 through 10 Milwaukee starts, the situation had been addressed internally.
"I've already talked to him about it,” Murphy said. “I wouldn't be surprised if MLB did something, you know what I mean? You just don't do that. We all have emotions, we all feel things, have our personal likes and dislikes, and emotions run high. We understand that home runs, strikeouts, ninth-inning saves -- the thing that I think about is, if that challenge got overturned, you've got to reset and go back out there and pitch. This is Major League Baseball. Guys can reset and, boom, base hit, dumper, homer, and all of a sudden it's 6-5.
“That kind of stuff, there is no place for if you're trying to be a really good team. If you're trying to repeat the kind of things we've done the last couple of years -- if you're trying to do that and more -- there's no part of it in the game."