DODGERTOWN — Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, flush with the excitement of having a new million-dollar arm in camp, still has something to be furious about. The slow-burn coach, the longest serving pitching coach in baseball history, was irate with how son, Yankees first baseman Shelley Duncan, has been described after a slide that erupted the rivalry between Tampa Bay and the Yanks this past week.

“Borderline criminal” was how one baseball official put it.

And Duncan was simmering before his kid’s suspension was announced Friday.

“I don’t like the comments being made,” Papa Duncan told the media Thursday before discussing the pending arrival of Kyle Lohse. “He plays the game hard. He plays to win. He plays the way you want everybody to play.”

At issue is Shelley Duncan’s late slide into second base Wednesday against the Rays. The Yankees and Tampa Bay have had an exchange of bad blood this spring, stemming from a collision at the plate that fractured the wrist of a Yankees’ prospect. Duncan’s slide led to a benches-clearing brawl, as described in The New York Daily News. It also led to this pointed comment from Rays manager Joe Maddon:

“What you saw today is a definition of a dirty play,” Maddon said. “There’s no room for that in our game. It’s contemptible. It’s wrong. It’s borderline criminal. I can’t believe they did that.

“That was a blatant attempt to hurt (Akinora Iwamura). And it was set up, it was planned, it was premeditated; it was all of the above. I don’t know what the difference is between that and a high stick in hockey. It was that bad.”

Dave Duncan said his son slid late, sure, but it was far from “dirty,” and the pitching coach fumed that a manager would dare to call another player “borderline criminal.” Duncan said there’s no place in the profession for public comments like that. He then went on to say that his boys — Shelley and Cardinals outfielder Chris Duncan – learned to play the game to win. And that meant “slide for the glove and hope you knock the ball out.”

The Duncan boys played hard growing up around the game. Remember, just a season ago they had to stop working out together because the two of them may have caused each other injury by trying to outdo each other in the weightroom. An article in today’s New York Times describes Shelley’s old-school baseball upbringing.

It’s one manager Tony La Russa knows. He can understand how the original crash at the plate could spill into Duncan’s slide at second and the full-fledged fracas that followed.

“Everybody looks at things from their side,” La Russa said. “Everybody’s going to protect their own club. There’s a heck of a chance that the club that gets stung, they sit around the clubhouse and say, ‘Hey, somebody’s got to send the message back. First chance we’re going to take somebody out.’

“Probably with the macho (mindset),” La Russa said later, “that would get them upset.”

Chris Duncan stayed away from the topic when reporters asked — he has his own concerns, starting with a batting average that came in at .050 today and has since dropped with an 0-for-3. And, other Cardinals players told one report to take the controversy back to Tampa. Family ties won’t bring an AL East spat into the Cardinals’ clubhouse, nor into any game.

Still, comments aren’t forgotten. Especially not Maddon’s. The media will ask.

The Rays do visit St. Louis this summer.

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 Yadier Molina has a way to avoid collisions like the one that started this whole AL East brouhaha. He and other Cardinals catchers are taught to leave a sliver of the plate for the runner to try and get to. Several Cardinals players said they know the catchers who block the whole plate and those that will leave a corner or a slice to target. La Russa is insistent that his Cardinals do it because “we have to look not only at that play but at having the guys we want around to finish the game, too.”

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A Dodger fan growing up, third baseman Brendan Ryan just had the defensive play of the day against his boyhood team. Here in the fourth, with Russ Springer pitching and the Dodgers’ rallying, LA outfielder Ivan DeJesus poked a bunt down the third base line. Ryan charged, scooped the ball with his barehand, leapt and fired to catch the speedy DeJesus by a step at first base.

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Aaron Miles is over taking extra at-bats with the Cardinals’ minor-league teams today. A couple Cardinals’ organizations came to Vero Beach, Fla., to play the Dodger teams, and Miles was assigned to spend the first hour bouncing from team to team to get at-bats. … Josh Phelps returned briefly to the big-league team for today’s game, and he has been playing outfield for Triple-A Memphis. “The more versatility he’s got, the more value he’s got,” La Russa said. He launched an apparent home that Juan Pierre caught with his feet on the warning track and his glove over the wall here at Holman Stadium.

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With manager Joe Torre and some of the Dodgers in China to play two spring training games — yes, the Dodgers’ spring training includes games in Florida, China, Arizona and California — Tommy Lasorda is the acting manager for LA club the Cardinals are playing. So I asked La Russa if it will be like old times today. Dodgers-A’s, Kirk Gibson, Dennis Eckersley’s slider, Jack Buck’s call, all that stuff …

“Hope not,” La Russa said. “He’s got the ring. He’s got our ring. If you got a guy on third, we’ll be watching for the squeeze. I know he’ll do it. He’ll be competing. Can’t take that away from him.”

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Want a snapshot of what the give-and-take is like with La Russa when the media’s talking with him and he’s not being beamed live to an FSN audience? Mike Nadel, a Chicago-based columnist, spent a week with the Cardinals media corp and wrote a column and a blog entry with a script of La Russa exchanges.

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