SAN DIEGO -- Between Giants ace Madison Bumgarner and Padres slugger Wil Myers, there's more than enough competitive Carolina fire to go around.
But ultimately, Tuesday's benches-clearing altercation -- which sparked when Bumgarner stared down Myers following a third-inning strikeout -- proved tame. So tame, in fact, that the two perpetrators laughed about it later, when they chanced upon each other at first base during the ninth inning of the Giants' 5-1 victory at Petco Park.
During the skirmish, no serious contact was made between any players, and no ejections were issued. Myers and Bumgarner -- who both hail from North Carolina -- chalked it up to the heat of the moment.
"I just wanted to be mad for a second," said Bumgarner.
The incident occurred when Myers swung and missed at a 3-2 fastball for what appeared to be a relatively pedestrian inning-ending strikeout. Myers bowed his head before glancing up at the left-field scoreboard to check the velocity on the pitch.
That's when he noticed Bumgarner's glare, at which point Myers barked back, prompting the benches and the bullpens to clear.
"I said to him -- which he couldn't understand -- I said, 'Come on, man, don't stare me down,' and he didn't really know what I said," Myers clarified afterward. "... We got caught up in the heat of the game, emotions were running high, people were competing out there. It wasn't a big deal. I think it was just a misunderstanding on both ends."

Order was restored shortly, and in the ninth inning, when Bumgarner reached first base, the two chatted for a brief second and seemed to patch things up. Bumgarner even joked that they were simply arguing about where to go to dinner.
Neither Myers nor Bumgarner would divulge what was said in that moment, but both seemed to agree that the incident had been quashed.
"This is nothing that's going to linger on," Myers said. "It was just one of those things that everybody got caught up in the heat of the moment, and it's over now."
Bumgarner came to the plate in the fourth inning and was greeted with a chorus of boos -- which turned to cheers when he went down swinging against Padres starter Colin Rea.
But ultimately it was Bumgarner who had the last laugh, as he polished off his 11th career complete game, while tallying 11 strikeouts.
"He's got an edge to him," said Giants skipper Bruce Bochy. "He's a competitor. He plays with a lot of intensity. He lives with every pitch and every moment of the game."
Padres skipper Andy Green didn't make too much out of the altercation afterward, saying simply, "there's competitive people on both sides of the equation."
But Green was slightly at a loss for a reason as to why Bumgarner stared down Myers in the first place, and said he wasn't necessarily disappointed with the way the situation escalated.
"Nothing came of it, but there's definitely a sentiment in our clubhouse that we're not going to be bullied by somebody on the mound screaming at our players," said Green. "Our players feel very strongly that they're going to stand up for one another, and I respect that."