Cal Quantrill appeared ready to bust this one out.
During the top of the fourth inning of Thursday’s Rockies-Red Sox matinee at Coors Field, the Colorado hurler got out of a two-out jam by inducing a flyout to center from Boston’s Reese McGuire, but that’s when things got heated — and seemingly personal with some colorful language — during a benches-clearing moment.
After getting the fly ball, Quantrill yelled and lifted up his leg in a moment of exaltation, which seemed to upset McGuire, the Red Sox catcher, who then stopped running toward first base and turned his attention to the starting pitcher.
Warning, graphic language
The two converged, with catcher Jacob Stallings in the middle, and jawed at each other when Quantrill appeared to mouth the words: “You jacked off in a f–king parking lot, you dumb f–k.”
This seemingly was a callback over four years in the making.
McGuire, in 2020, was arrested for allegedly masturbating in a Dunedin, Florida parking lot near the spring training facility of the Blue Jays, the organization he was playing for at the time.
After first being charged with exposure of sexual organs — a first-degree misdemeanor that’s punishable with up to one year in jail — McGuire pleaded no contest and faced just a $450 fine.
The two teams eventually emptied the dugouts, coming together along the first-base line in what became a heated moment that eventually cooled off with no physical altercation taking place.
No ejections were handed out after the moment fraught with tension, and Quantrill remained in the game, pitching for six innings, allowing three runs on six hits with three strikeouts.
The Rockies would go on to win the game 20-7.
The two nearly had a chance to face each other again in the top of the sixth inning, but Boston’s Romy Gonzalez — the hitter before McGuire — hit into an inning-ending double play.
Rockies reliever Tyler Kinley then came on in the seventh inning to face McGuire.
Fittingly, the bench-clearing incident came 20 years to the day after the Red Sox and Yankees got into an infamous scuffle involving Alex Rodriguez, Bronson Arroyo and Jason Varitek..
And to add another layer of connection to it all, Quantrill’s dad, Paul, pitched 2/3 of an inning of relief for the Yankees that game.