Braves coach Terry Pendleton grabs and shoves Chris Johnson after helmet-tossing incident

The Atlanta Braves are a feisty bunch, aren't they?

They won't hesitate to confront an opponent when they feel they've been disrespected. We've witnessed several examples of that this season, most recently when Brian McCann took exception to Carlos Gomez's hot-dogging on Wednesday. And apparently they won't hesitate to confront one of their own if they feel he needs to be put in his place.

Hey, at least they don't play any favorites, right?

Immediately following their 5-4 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday, we saw the latter. A quick postgame camera shot in the Braves dugout saw a calm scene quickly escalate after a heated Terry Pendleton stood up and grabbed third baseman Chris Johnson forcefully by the jersey. The shot stayed on long enough to see Pendleton give Johnson an earful, and then the Braves first-base coach capped the exchange by shoving Johnson and adding a few more words.

The fierce confrontation can be seen at 0:25 in the video above.

Seconds earlier, Johnson had ripped a ground ball that appeared ticketed for left field for a game-tying single. As seen in the video, Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins made a terrific diving stop and then popped to his feet to throw a head-first sliding Johnson out at first base.

The easiest assumption to make was Pendleton got ticked off when Johnson elected to slide rather than run the play out. But it turns out there was more to the story that wasn't caught on camera.

Well, that certainly gives Pendleton a better reason to be as angry as he was. Still, it's not a good look when those types of confrontations are happening where all of the world can see them. That doesn't mean Pendleton should have grabbed Chris Johnson and pushed him around in the tunnel or the clubhouse, but those are the locations where a team problem should be handled.

Then again, Chris Johnson has been involved directly or on the fringe of pretty much every Braves incident this season. Apparently he has a way of getting under people's skin and/or overreacting, so maybe Pendleton's anger was the result of a slow build that finally reached its peak following a tough loss. We'll probably never know since Johnson left the stadium on Saturday without commenting and the Braves went directly into spin mode.

Fair enough. We'll leave it at that. But just know we're keeping a closer eye on you, Atlanta.

The season is winding down but we're just warming up!
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