Nearly four years have passed since the notorious play where Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg, but the bad blood still apparently remains.
Addressing the media Tuesday after being called up by the Mets, the veteran infielder Tejada was asked about Utley’s takeout slide in the 2015 NLDS that fractured his fibula. Tejada noted that it took him roughly a year-and-a-half to fully recover from the injury and that he still has not spoken to Utley since, per MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo.
The timing here is particularly significant because the last game that Tejada played for the Mets was that Game 2 of the NLDS, a series where they beat Utley’s Dodgers 3-2. The 29-year-old signed with the St. Louis Cardinals a few months later and bounced around with the Baltimore Orioles and the San Francisco Giants before agreeing to a minor-league deal with the Mets this past offseason. With Jeff McNeil going on the injured list, Tejada will now be playing for the Mets for the first time since the Utley incident.
As for Utley, he is now retired, but his legacy lives on — for one, the league enacted a new slide rule on double plays after the incident stating that a runner must “make a bona fide attempt to reach and remain on the base.”
Utley did make an attempt to apologize to Tejada at the time, but that was through another player, and the two men themselves still have not spoken.
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