Blue Jays fans have their last scrap with Joe West

You had to know Gibby would be on this list

For the vast majority of Blue Jays fans, John Gibbons is very well remembered. One of the things that many fans loved about him was his willingness to stick up for players. Naturally, that led to a few confrontations with Joe West over the years.

Oddly enough West only threw Gibbons out of the game once in all the years they worked on the same field, and that came back in May of 2016. Shout out to bluejayshunter.com for keeping track of John Gibbons’ career ejections, and making it easy to find the video of the incident.

On that day, West wasn’t even behind the plate, but he was acting as the crew chief for the crew in Minnesota as the Blue Jays played against the Twins. As Josh Donaldson strolled to the plate, Twins pitcher Phil Hughes threw two consecutive pitches at him, with the first just missing him inside, and the second being thrown behind the 2015 AL MVP.

Rather than throwing Hughes out of the game for the second straight attempt to hit Donaldson, the plate umpire issued a warning instead, which brought Gibbons out of the dugout. In the end, Gibbons absolutely had a point that Hughes should have been thrown out of the game, but instead it was Gibbons who was hitting the showers a little early.

Not that I’m looking to pick on the now-retired umpire here, but it was a classic exchange of West vs. the Blue Jays where he made the wrong decision on the field, and then doubled down by throwing out Gibbons, and even seemingly looking to extend their argument by following Gibby a bit before the skipper left the field. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ll miss something about those weird little exchanges.