MLB Kansas City

Are all of these major league ballplayers going crazy from the heat or something? First Shawn Chacon goes nuts on Ed Wade, then Manny Ramirez shoves a traveling secretary to the ground. Now, some seemingly innocuous complaining had the potential to turn into another full scale brawl on Saturday night. In the blue corner: Jose Guillen. In the other blue corner: Royals pitching coach Bob McClure.

Guillen was sitting at a table by his locker when he toppled over a chair and made a comment in Spanish. After a teammate attempted to calm him down, Guillen appeared to get more agitated, tossed over another chair and said, "Coaches don't need to be all up in our ... business."

McClure, who was sitting at his locker, turned around and said, "Jose, if you're talking about me, then you need to shut ... up." Guillen then knocked over another chair, yelled at McClure and confronted the coach.

Guillen told McClure he wasn't talking about him and wasn't being disrespectful toward the coach. Guillen added he didn't appreciate McClure telling him to be quiet.

No punches were thrown, so it turns out to be like one of those married couple fights where you start arguing over something dumb like leaving the stove on, and then you get separated and then you work things out and you wonder what the heck you were fighting about in the first place. I guess people will invent things to fight about when their ballclub is ten games under .500, and when one of those people is Jose Guillen ... generally not the calmest person in the world (not that there's anything wrong with that).

A few days ago, our Baseball is Boring Buddy Tom Fornelli (Dugout SN: StLunaticsRapFornelli) reported on Alberto Callaspo's collapse-o in Kansas City. It turns out he was busted for DUI and put on the disabled list for "evaluation and treatment of an undisclosed medical condition," the Major League Baseball equivalent of Hollywood's "severe exhaustion," which basically just means that he's an adult acting like a stupid idiot and is an eff-up. The worst thing is that it happens as the Royals climb out of the cellar for the first time since... well God, are any of us old enough to remember that?

What we bring you today is the police report of the DUI bust, which, as you may have guessed, did not go as planned. It didn't involve Alberto Callaspo going over to, say, Bono's house and getting busted for gay drug bongo sex and having his wife leave him for, oh, let's say Matthew Sweet or anything, but I mean I guess it's fairly interesting.

After the jump, the dark story behind Alberto's Last Gasp-o... and a look at the sinister forces that could be lurking in the shadows to keep the Royals down.

The Royals are playing their best baseball of the season right now, as they feasted on National League competition, and had won 11 of 12 before dropping their last two games against the Cardinals. So there's plenty of reason to celebrate in Kansas City right now, because for the first time in years, Royals fans have been able to watch a team that actually resembles a Major League team.

Unfortunately, the celebration made it's way to members of the team this last weekend when second baseman Alberto Callaspo was busted for a DUI on Friday night after the Royals sixth straight win. On Saturday, Callaspo was placed on the disabled list for undisclosed reasons.

"Alberto is going on the disabled list for evaluation and treatment of an undisclosed medical condition," manager Trey Hillman said. He declined to elaborate.

"I've already given the statement," he said.

Yeah, I can't read minds or anything, but I'd be willing to wager that the undisclosed medical condition that Hillman was referring to was Alberto's DUI. In the interest of being purely speculative, maybe this incident isn't anything new for Callaspo, it's just the first time he's been caught and the Royals want to help him out.

I mean, there have been plenty of baseball players and managers (Hello, Mr. LaRussa!) who have been pulled over for DUI's, yet I don't know many of them who've been placed on the disabled list.

Of course, it's also entirely possible that this is an isolated occurrence for Callaspo and the Royals are just sending a message to the rest of the team to keep this from happening. We don't need any more Josh Hancock incidents. Whatever it is, this is the right move by the Royals, and one that other teams could learn from.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

L.A. Angels of Anaheim (48-33) at L.A. Dodgers of L.A. (38-42) - 4:10 PM ET

The final day of interleague play, or as ESPN has needlessly re-branded it: "AL/NL SHOWDOWN!" (like it's a western gunfight or something) will feature a good pitching matchup between John Lackey (5-1, 1.65) and Derek Lowe (5-7, 4.05). Of course, it can't be better than the one between Chad Billingsley and Jered Weaver last night, where Weaver combined with Jose Arredondo for eight innings of no-hit baseball, but lost. After coming back from an early season injury, Lackey really hasn't had a bad outing all season. So if anyone can continue the no-hit parade for the Dodgers, it's Lackey.

We've heard that Barry Bonds doesn't want to play for an independent league team but would he be willing to sign with the Kansas City Royals? The difference may seem negligible at times but these Royals are a little different. It's been under just about everyone's radar but they've won 10 of 11 games and are kinda, sorta still breathing in the AL Central race.

Their pitching staff has shown surprising friskiness through the good stretch but they don't score enough runs. Signing Bonds would make a huge impact says Joe Posnanski.

If you plug in fairly conservative Barry numbers in the Royals lineup - say .450 and .550, which is still down from last year - the Royals lineup that was scoring 4.91 runs per game is suddenly scoring 5.34 runs. As many readers pointed out, that really is a huge, huge difference.

Indeed it is a big difference. Posnanski's entire argument is long but well worth reading. He mentions all the negatives about signing Bonds, including the circus that would result but comes down firmly in support. As the signing of Jose Guillen makes clear, the Royals aren't adverse to players with baggage and the Royals could benefit from a bit of a circus. More fans, more money and more pressure to find out about the mettle of their young players.

One of the complaints about interleague baseball is that, with a few exceptions, the games are between teams with no historical rivalry which means less games between teams that do have such background to their meetings. On the surface this week's series between the Royals and the Rockies would fit the bill unless the thought of Clint Hurdle managing against the team he played against boils your potatoes.

Leave it to those two rapscallions, Ramon Ramirez and Yorvit Torrealba, to gin up some controversy where none existed. The Denver Post reports that the two players had a conversation before Ramirez walked Torrealba on four pitches in the ninth inning, a couple of which appeared to be in the general direction of the catcher's head and back.

Ramirez insisted afterward that the ball was wet from perspiration, saying "it slipped." Torrealba wasn't buying it. He said he was prepared for Ramirez to throw at him, though he wouldn't reveal why. "Ask him. It's all good," Torrealba said. "Every time I talk about stuff, I get fined or suspended."

Ramirez was traded by Colorado before the season and some Rockies said that he told them he was going to do some drilling when the two teams met. He pitched Monday and in the eighth inning on Tuesday without incident, however. We'll see if the two teams continue bucking for inclusion in our next edition of Old Boss, New Boss this evening.

On Tuesday afternoon, after a meeting of a player-management safety committee, Major League Baseball announced they will start testing maple bats. The bats, popular with hitters, have a propensity to shatter and create an injury risk. Tom Fornelli addressed the concerns yesterday and I agree with his closing words, "It's better that baseball do it now and force it's players to deal with it rather than waiting for someone to get seriously hurt first."

Especially since we no longer have to wait for someone to get hurt. Last night in Kansas City, home plate umpire Brian O'Nora got hit in the head by a piece of Miguel Olivo's maple bat. Blood poured out and O'Nora had to leave the game and head to the hospital. Royals manager Trey Hillman sounds like he's ready to see maple go the way of the spitball.

"They are very, very dangerous. I'm surprised that this is the first incident we've seen. It could have been worse, a lot worse. It looked a lot worse than it was. There was a lot of blood. My understanding is that he is OK."

O'Nora does seem to be OK but if anti-maple enthusiasts were looking for a smoking gun, they've got one. Olivo might be willing to testify on their behalf. He switched to an ash bat after the second inning incident and singled home a run in his next at-bat.

Kansas City Royals starter Gil Meche hasn't exactly been living up to that $11 million price tag of his this season. Meche is 3-8 with an ERA of 5.54, a WHIP of 1.47, and nearly halfway to matching last season's walk total of 62 already.

So when a pitcher costs a lot, is struggling, and plays for a small budget team who is in last place, the rumors start to swirl that he may soon be on the move. This is the case for Meche as teams like the Cubs are interested in his services, but Gil and Dayton Moore want you to know that it's not going to happen.

Right-hander Gil Meche just laughs at those rumors circulating regarding a possible trade sending him to the Chicago Cubs.

"How's that going to happen?" he asked.

Meche has a no-trade clause in his contract and said he hasn't been asked to waive it. Furthermore, he has no interest in doing so.

General manager Dayton Moore declined to comment on the rumor, but club officials privately dismissed it. One said, "If we're going to make a run at this thing in 2010, how are we going to do it without Gil Meche?"

Meche had a chance to be a member of the Cubs before joining the Royals, as they were one of the teams bidding for his services before last season, but he chose Kansas City. It doesn't look like a year and a half of losing has done anything to help change his mind.

Still, if you ever thought you'd hear a general manager question how a team could win without Gil Meche, well, you must be his mother or something.

Much has been made of Brian Bannister's baseball smarts. Unlike most players, Bannister has showed off an impressive understanding of underlying sabermetric stats, and has admitted to putting them to use on the mound. Bannister isn't a physically gifted pitcher, so it was something of a blogger geekfest to see him pitch so well in 2007 with nothing more than Pitch f/x, a middling fastball, and BABIP.

Unfortunately, 2008 is not fitting the script. At all. Banny's early 2008 numbers are lagging way behind his 2007 stats, and his most recent start (against the red-hot Yankees) was a five-runs-in-three-and-a-half innings disaster.

Sample size, as Bannister would surely note, is one thing. Having a freakishly unsustainable 2007 BABIP is another. As Rob Neyer notes today, Bannister is an interesting guy, but he's far more so when he's not actually on the mound.

Because, you know, he kinda sucks. Get it?