Jose Ramirez decks Tim Anderson during Guardians-White Sox brawl game

The White Sox and Guardians turned a baseball game into a boxing match and then a bench-clearing brawl.

Chicago shortstop Tim Anderson and Cleveland third baseman Jose Ramírez exchanged punches at second base Saturday night during the White Sox’s 7-4 win at Progressive Field, triggering a bench-clearing melee in the sixth inning that led to six ejections.

Anderson and Ramirez are likely facing suspensions.

With the Guardians trailing 5-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning, the altercation began when Ramírez slid headfirst into second after lacing an RBI double into right field off Bryan Shaw and Anderson stood over him, straddling Ramírez.

When Ramírez got up, he pointed his finger at Anderson and yelled, prompting them to square off.

Anderson, who dropped his glove and put up his hands in a fighting position, threw the first punch, setting off a brawl that saw both dugouts and bullpens empty onto the infield.

“It’s not funny, but boys will be boys,” said Guardians manager Terry Francona, who was ejected following the fracas

Francona wasn’t exactly sure what prompted the Anderson-Ramírez bout, but said that before the brawl, Anderson had been told by one of the umpires to stop jawing at Guardians rookie Gabriel Arias.

One of the umpires tried to break up the scuffle by getting in between the two players, but stepped away when he saw that wasn’t going to work.

As the benches were already clearing, Ramirez then caught Anderson with a nasty right hook, sending him to ground.

“I felt I was able to land one,” Ramírez said through a translator.

“He’s been disrespecting the game for a while,” Ramírez added. “When he does something like that on the bases, he can get somebody out of the game. So I was telling him to stop doing that. After he tapped me really hard, more than needed, he said he wanted to fight and I had to defend myself.”

Anderson was not available for comment afterward.

Not surprisingly, Ramirez and Anderson were ejected, but they weren’t the only ones.

Francona, third base coach Mike Sarbaugh and closer Emmanuel Clase, and Chicago manager Pedro Grifol were ejected for their actions later in a fight that included multiple flare-ups on the infield and in foul territory.

Once Anderson got up from the punch, he had to be forcibly taken into the dugout by members of the coaching staff.

But he returned to the field several minutes later from the clubhouse.

White Sox teammate Andrew Vaughn physically carried Anderson down the steps following the latter’s outburst.

Tempers temporarily calmed before Francona and Grifol had words, leading to pushing and shoving by players and coaches on both teams as the crowd roared.

“I think he was more yelling at me and I yelled back,” Francona said.

Grifol didn’t want to comment directly about the ugly incident.

“There are a lot of people upset,” he said. “Thank God I haven’t heard of any news out of the trainer’s room. I’m not going to talk about it. I’m going to let MLB figure this out. They’ve got some work to do.”

Sarbaugh and Clase were the primary figures in subsequent escalations during the delay which took 15 minutes before order was restored.

“From the second I set foot in the clubhouse, I could tell these teams don’t like each other,” said Cleveland starter and former Met Noah Syndergaard, who was acquired in a trade last week. “And I don’t think it’s going to be resolved anytime soon.”

That might be an understatement.

— with AP

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