Keon Broxton Gets Sent off During Baseball Game for Throwing his Glove at the Umpire

Seattle Mariners player Keon Broxton was left very red-faced when he got into trouble with the umpire. Initially, the 29-year old had trouble hitting the ball and got stuck out twice already. After getting a third strike, from home-plate umpire Manny Gonzalez, his frustration boiled over.

Unfortunately for him, his temper boomeranged to bite him hard, as one of his flung batting gloves hit Gonzalez in the face. To make matters worse, the Mariners suffered a 5-4 loss to the Yankees, and it was his first career ejection.

Keon Broxton was miffed at the strike call on a 93-mph fastball by J.A. Happ on the outside edge of the plate. So, he reacted by tossing aside his bat, knocking his batting helmet off his head and tossing one of his baseball gloves backward toward home plate. Unfortunately for him, it inadvertently hit Gonzalez in the face.

Gonzalez wasted no time giving Broxton his marching orders, with Mallex Smith replacing him in right field to start the third inning.

“I didn’t know I hit him until I turned around and he told me,” a sheepish Keon Broxton confessed afterwards. “I just heard the crowd after a couple seconds after I let the batting glove release. I turned around and he said, ‘You hit me in the face. You’re out.’ I was like, ‘Argh. I did not mean to do that at all.’

“The odds of that happening are very slim. It’s really unfortunate it happened, but it’s all on me. That’s a lesson learned. I can handle things in a better way. I could have just walked to the dugout and put my stuff down and gone back out there, regardless of how I felt about the call. I take full responsibility for it.

“It’s a bad look. It’s a bad look for the organization and a bad look for me. I definitely regret doing it. I learned from it. Now I know. You just can’t do stuff like that. That’s not how baseball should be played anyway.”

The 29-year-old Broxton was claimed off waivers from the Orioles in late July and has hit .173 with 27 strikeouts in 52 plate appearances in 19 games with the Mariners.

Manager Scott Servais went out to the plate after Broxton was ejected, but it was too late.

“He certainly didn’t agree with the call, but it was an accident,” Servais said. “The umpire knew it was an accident. It’s just one of those things. You can’t do that with the equipment.”