Johnny Damon made it official last night — the pinstripes no longer fit.
After an ugly 9-5 Yankees victory over the Tigers at Yankee Stadium, Damon ripped former teammate Brett Gardner, calling Gardner’s slide two days earlier “dirty.”
Gardner’s hard slide into second to try to break up a double play in the ninth inning of Monday’s game continues to have repercussions. Tigers second baseman Carlos Guillen was injured on the play and was placed on the disabled list yesterday.
The Tigers have said the slide was clean, but Jeremy Bonderman hit Gardner with his first pitch of the game and both benches were warned.
Damon made it clear after the game that there are hard feelings in the Tigers’ clubhouse.
“If anyone over there thought it was a clean slide, then we have a different opinion on that,” said Damon, who spent four years as a Yankee. “It’s part of baseball. But I thought the slide was dirty, and I’m sure a lot of those guys would agree.”
Gardner would not say if he thought Bonderman intentionally hit him, and he was surprised to hear Damon criticized him.
“That’s his opinion,” Gardner told The Post. “He knows how I play. I think if he was over here in this clubhouse he probably would have given me a high-five for trying to break up the double play.”
The Yankees cruised to the win with home runs from Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson, as well as an outstanding job by their bullpen. They remain tied for first with the Rays atop the AL East, but baseball was secondary to the beanball battle that broke out.
In the eighth inning, Chad Gaudin hit Miguel Cabrera, who had already homered twice, in the ribs. Despite the warning in the first inning, home plate umpire Eric Cooper did not eject Gaudin. That fired up Tigers manager Jim Leyland, who gave Cooper an earful and eventually got tossed from the game.
In the bottom of the inning, Tigers reliever Enrique Gonzalez threw a pitch behind Derek Jeter. Gonzalez was not ejected either.
“Next question,” is all Leyland would bark to questions about the hit batsmen.
Damon said there is no question in his mind Gaudin hit Cabrera intentionally.
“I definitely thought they hit Miggy on purpose,” Damon said. “Gardner, the other day, he actually possibly ruined or ended Guillen’s season.”
Gaudin said there was no intent.
“It just got away from me, as simple as that,” he said. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Yankees manager Joe Girardi pointed to how he had to use his bullpen to finish the game as evidence the plunking was not ordered from the Yankees bench. Once Gaudin loaded the bases, Girardi had to turn to David Robertson and Mariano Rivera to close out the game.
“To think that we did it on purpose . . . they’re going to have their thoughts and I understand that,” Girardi said. “It looks bad. Miguel Cabrera had hit two homers. It looks bad. I understand that, but you know how I use my bullpen. This is not a night where I wanted to use Robertson or Mo, but Chad didn’t have it tonight.”
Bonderman said “next question” when asked about hitting Gardner, but it’s hard to believe his first pitch missed badly enough to hit Gardner in the leg.
The Tigers could not be happy about Guillen going down on Derek Jeter’s double play Monday night, but Gardner defended the play.
“Obviously, I feel bad about Carlos getting hurt. I wasn’t trying to hurt him,” Gardner said. “I don’t think it was dirty at all. I could have went in with my spikes and I didn’t. I hit him with the front or the side of my leg. I didn’t think it was dirty. Some people probably do, and that’s that.”
One of them is his former teammate.
Additional reporting by Mark Hale.