By: Jeff Riger

By now you surely have heard about the injury to Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. You know, the story about him shagging fly balls in the outfield only to end up with a torn ACL after having a mishap near the fence in leftfield on the warning track. Rivera, after sustaining the injury is out for the season and worse is that his brilliant career might have come to an end as well.

Since the incident a lot of fans and baseball experts have come out saying that there is no way that Rivera should have been shagging fly balls, and I guess that is a normal opinion if it wasn’t customary for every pitcher to do the exact same thing before every game.

The same question was brought up to Tigers skipper Jim Leyland who didn’t have a problem telling those people that their opinion is flat out wrong. “I saw that on TV and it made me sick to be honest with you” Leyland said referring to people saying Rivera should not have been patrolling the outfield for fly balls. Leyland continued saying “that’s what we do, what is he supposed to be doing, sitting there eating chili while everybody is out in the field? What the Hell? Come on! Get a life.”

As serious as Leyland’s response was at the time, it quickly turned funny, especially for any fans of the “Austin Powers” movies. The manager frequently uses a word that is reserved to describe a certain act in the movie to describe another duty performed in the baseball world.

Listen below to hear what I’m talking about!

I’m sure Leyland had no intention of making his quote funny, but you really can’t help to laugh after hearing it.

Listen and let me know what you think?