Just when you thought you’d seen every possible baseball infraction, along comes the PBJ ejection.
The bizarre ejection happened in an American Athletic Conference game between the East Carolina Pirates and the South Florida Bulls.
East Carolina is the top team in the conference and will be the number-one seed in the upcoming college baseball tournament.
The game began with some early excitement as East Carolina Pirates batter Jacob Starling opened the game with a home run. Next up was Carter Cunningham, who also homered.
After Starling crossed home plate and headed to the dugout, everything went south for the Pirates.
A gauntlet of players welcomed him, and as he was going through the tunnel of players, starting pitcher Josh Grosz gave Starling a bite of Grosz’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Other spotters say that Grosz gave him a bite of a hot dog which poses the question, is a hot dog a sandwich?
The home plate umpire spotted this sandwich infraction and ejected Grosz from the game for “unsportsmanlike demonstration and celebration.”
There are videos of Starling returning to the dugout, and the sandwich transfer is difficult to spot. The umpire must have 20-20 vision.
Not only was Grosz thrown out of this game, but he’s also suspended from the next game scheduled for Thursday, May 25.
Grosz is one of the best pitchers on the ECU squad, putting up a 3.49 earned run average pitching in 69 2/3 innings this year.
Unfortunately, the Pirates lost the first game to South Florida in their run for the NCCA baseball title.
Major league players have been ejected for unusual reasons too.
Cleveland center fielder Jimmy Piersall was ejected for dancing in a 1960 game.
Legendary hitter Ted Williams was at bat with the game on the line, and Piersall began dancing in center field.
Umpire Eddie Hurley ordered him to stop, and when he refused, he was ejected. He broke Rule 4.06(b), which states that no fielder in the batter’s line of view will try to distract the batter.
