Randy Arozarena Responds to Dodgers Catcher Will Smith After Ignoring His Greeting at WBC
During Team Mexico's upset win over Team USA in the World Baseball Classic over the weekend, there was a weird interaction that gained some traction on social media. Team Mexico's Randy Arozarena, who plays for the Tampa Bay Rays in the MLB, got up to the plate, where Dodgers catcher Will Smith was getting ready for the at-bat. Arozarena appeared to say something to Smith, and put his arm out for a first bump — however, Smith seemed to ignore him. Here's a video of the play:
Obviously, this got the people on Twitter talking. Smith doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would do something like this, but it was easy to speculate that something weird was going on.
After the game, though, Arozarena addressed the situtation, and didn't really make Smith look too good. Pretty much all the speculation on him leaving Arozarena hanging was confirmed. Here's his quote, via Bob Nightengale on Twitter.
"I tried to salute him, but he left me with a hand hanging out," Arozarena said. "What am I going to do? Not cry. So I just kept going forward."
Yeah, so not exactly a good look for Smith. There isn't really much of a reason for Smith to have ignored him, unless he was just really focused on the game and wasn't paying attention.
Smith and Arozarena were on opposing teams in the 2020 World Series, when the Dodgers ousted the Rays in six games. While Arozarena did have an incredible series hitting three home runs with an OPS of 1.234, there wasn't exactly much bad blood — and clearly, Arozarena feels good about the relationship as he was trying to say hi to Smith before his at-bat.
This isn't much of a story, but it is interesting that Smith seemingly wanted nothing to do with Arozarena in that moment. Arozarena got the last laugh, though, as his team dominated the US on the way to a huge victory.
