SAN FRANCISCO — No, Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing was not trying to belittle the injury that Giants outfielder Jung Hoo Lee sustained in Tuesday’s game at Oracle Park.
On Wednesday, Rushing was asked about a clip that made the rounds (especially among Giants fans) the night before, when he appeared to say “f— ‘em” after Lee was slow to get up following a tag play at the plate.
Lee eventually left the game with a leg injury.
But Rushing insisted the moment was taken out of context.
“Hopefully he didn’t take it the way it was put out,” Rushing said. “I’ll be sure to say something to him face-to-face tomorrow, making sure he’s OK. There was nothing really directed at him. He’s a great guy.”
Rushing also said the internet’s attempted lip-reading of what he said wasn’t exactly accurate.
“I used a word, but it was not what [people thought] was said,” he insisted. “I’ll just leave it at that.”
The moment in question happened during the sixth inning Tuesday, when Lee attempted to score from first on a single by Helios Ramos.
A relay play from center fielder Alex Call to second baseman Alex Freeland easily beat Lee to the plate.
Still, Lee tried to slide around Rushing’s tag. As he did, his leg got caught underneath him, aggravating a quad injury he said he initially suffered last week.
Lee stayed down at the plate for a few moments after the out, which retired the side, was recorded — though he remained in the game for another inning before eventually being removed.
It was as Rushing was returning to the Dodgers’ dugout after the tag that a TV camera caught him looking back toward the plate, then dropping what many online observers believed to be the F-bomb.
The video went viral, fueled by long-heated emotions that accompany every rivalry meeting between the Dodgers and Giants. One post on X (formerly Twitter) received more than 1 million views.
“It’s social media, it’s fine,” Rushing said. “As long as he’s OK, and he doesn’t think I’m coming at him or any of those guys over there, that’s the biggest thing for me. I don’t care what other people put out there or say. I just want to play the game, play the game hard. That’s what I do every night.”
Rushing noted that he also checked with Dodgers infielder Hyeseong Kim, a fellow South Korean native who has been teammates with Lee in the World Baseball Classic, to make sure Lee was all right.
“He’s playing the game, he’s doing what his coach told him to do,” Rushing said. “Third base coach sent him, and he ran hard the whole way. It was kind of an awkward slide. That’s all it was. There wasn’t anything else added to it. I think it was just media making something out of nothing.”