The 2016 White Sox season was a complete mess of idiots and weirdos, and Todd Frazier apparently still can't let it go.
That was the season that launched a full organizational rebuild, you'll remember, a year that started with the retirement of Adam LaRoche in response to the removal of his kid, Drake from the clubhouse and continued with Chris Sale's retro-jersey destruction tantrum. Along for all of it was Adam Eaton, a fake nice guy largely detested by teammates. It was the furthest thing from coincidence that the latter two were summarily traded for a slew of prospects to push the reset button on all of it.
Frazier was the third baseman on that team, and he got into yet another dust-up with Eaton on Monday night, getting nose to nose with him as Eaton was jogging off the field after grounding into a double play and forcing their respective Mets and Nationals teammates to intervene. A similar incident occurred last August as well, with the two exchanging words during a game.
It all stems from ill will between the two as White Sox, with Eaton the sore loser of an alpha male locker room stand-off. With veteran shortstop Jimmy Rollins let go after 41 games -- still a long enough stint for Rollins to have been the driving force behind Drake LaRoche's ouster and publicly clash with tightly wound infielder Brett Lawrie -- and no other English-speaking position player seeking to step into a leadership role, Eaton decided he'd try to fill the vacuum.
It should be noted that this was after Eaton had appeared on 670 The Score to lament bizarrely that the team had "lost a leader in Drake" when the boy was removed, and plenty of members of the White Sox organization were listening.
Frazier, who just happened to have the locker next door, called out Eaton for being a phony and made it clear that he lacked the standing in that room to be taken seriously as a leader.
Eaton's locker was moved well away from Frazier's shortly thereafter, and there was symbolic significance when the team gave that spot instead to top prospect Tim Anderson. Perhaps the best part is that Eaton claimed that he had actually wanted to move lockers the whole time, because its proximity to the doorway to the dugout tunnel made him "too cold."
Yes, it's this stupid.
And it's even dumber when you learn that Eaton himself is holding onto things, literally. Eaton made sure to keep one of the jerseys Sale cut up in his fit of pique, a source told 670 The Score, with the hope of either selling it someday or keeping alive in his heart the memory of a baseball team that was really screwed up, in large part because he was on it.
By Dan Bernstein