JUPITER, Fla. -- Years ago, when Mike Matheny was the Cardinals' catcher and not the Cardinals' manager, he'd get into "go-arounds" with Matt Morris. The forced altercations came at Morris' request, meant to motivate the ace right-hander, to push him to a place where he could unleash his anger on the mound.
"It was kind of exhausting, to be honest," Matheny remembers. "We'd have confrontations in the middle of the game, and then afterwards he'd come up and kiss me."
Flash forward to last season, where similar charades were staged in the dugout at Triple-A Memphis between catcher Carson Kelly and right-hander Mike Mayers.