Manny Machado is at it again. Everyone is talking about him this postseason, but unfortunately, it’s not always about how good he is at playing baseball. The NLCS has it all. Bad slides, not checking on a catcher after a backswing, petulant whining at home plate, and even starting drama by running into first base wrong. That last one sounds too absurd to be true, but no, it’s real.

Orioles fans are familiar with this drama. We put up with it, of course, because for seven seasons Machado wore the uniform of our favorite baseball team, because he’s the best baseball player we’ve seen on the team in the 21st century and we got to watch him bloom from the touted prospect into one of the best players in all of baseball. It will be a long time before we see anyone as good as Machado grow into his prime here, if we ever see that again.

These things are Dodgers’ fans problems currently. They might not even consider it a problem because as it ended up, Machado scored the winning run in extra innings last night to help his team tie up the NLCS against the Brewers at two games apiece with this nifty slide:

Manny Machado's wonderful slide finally puts everyone to bed: https://t.co/itd9qgjVKX pic.twitter.com/rBt63U0C5F — Deadspin (@Deadspin) October 17, 2018

Who, after watching their favorite baseball team win in such a fashion in extra innings in the postseason, really wants to say anything bad about the player who did that? Probably not many people. In this case, the rest of the baseball world is happy to step up and provide the condemnation for things like this:

Manny Machado has a second controversial slide and this time, upon review, umps decided he violated the new slide rules.



(via @MLBReplays)pic.twitter.com/AzrItAwMpG — Yahoo Sports MLB (@MLByahoosports) October 16, 2018

Pictured across the top tweet is one slide from NLCS game 3 where Machado came in contact with the defender, contact he appeared to go out of his way to initiate. In the video, there is a second slide from later in the game where Machado also initiates contact with a defender late. On replay, the second slide was deemed to be illegal and the batter was called out and the play became a double play.

This is not the first time there have been people upset with the way Machado slides. This was refreshed in my memory on searching for “manny machado slide” on Twitter by the number of tweets from Red Sox fans who remain salty over this play from last April, which sparked a beef that went on through the early months of the season:

Manny Machado is a dirty player. pic.twitter.com/xrpU67PfFY — Boston Strong (@BostonStrong_34) April 22, 2017

Machado isn’t even on the Orioles any more and still upon being reminded of this, my first reaction is to think unkind things about the Red Sox and their fans. It is an axiom of my life as a sports fan that they can never be right or happy about anything. Reality is not always so accommodating of this.

Over the course of this NLCS, Machado has been branching out beyond just bad slides, too. Here he is from earlier in last night’s game pulling the “try to call a late time” move:

Did Manny Machado deserve to get "Time" called? pic.twitter.com/Ap7FzKJsLE — Pitcher List (@PitcherList) October 17, 2018

The pitcher is clearly into his pitching motion by the time Machado sticks his arm out. Machado steps back out of the batters box as if time has been granted, even though it hasn’t, and then, when he is called out on a pitch that’s basically right down the middle, reacts poorly.

In a vacuum, this happening would receive no scrutiny, but in the middle of a series where Machado is the center of attention for a variety of things, it’s one more thing on the pile. Among the others was his hustle, or occasional lack thereof - also not a strange idea to O’s fans who saw the first 860 games of Machado’s career.

Prior to Tuesday’s Game 4, Machado addressed some criticism of his hustle in an interview with The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal by saying, “I’m not the type of player that’s going to be Johnny Hustle ... That’s just not my personality, that’s not my cup of tea.” This is as pure of a wrestling heel kind of move as grabbing the steel chair when the referee isn’t looking and cracking it over the other guy’s back.

What’s crazy is that the business with the not getting timeout isn’t even the end of the antics from last night for Machado, who also did this while running to first base at one point in the game:

Manny Machado kicked Jesús Aguilar. Many #takes will follow. pic.twitter.com/uMopidt8IJ — Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) October 17, 2018

What the heck is this, even? You can watch a lot of games and you don’t see a player initiate contact with the first baseman in this way. It just doesn’t happen because it’s not something that happens even accidentally. And here’s Machado hoofing along, clipping the first baseman’s ankle on the way by. Machado and the first baseman, Jesus Aguilar, appeared to be over the incident later in the game, but that doesn’t erase what happened.

A guy who had that as his only infraction might get the benefit of the doubt. Machado is tough to defend because at this point... well, it seems to just be who he is. The totality of Machado’s actions in this series - probably added to the frustration of losing in walk-off fashion last night - prompted Brewers star Christian Yelich to proclaim, “It’s a dirty play by a dirty player,” and then, apparently, as he walked away from the cameras, “Fuck that motherfucker.”

I think back to what I believe was the first of Machado’s moments that made you go “WTF?”:

In the four-and-a-half years since this happened, I had forgotten how ridiculous that it was. There is nothing out of the ordinary about the play whatsoever, at least until Machado flops like a Duke basketball player while throwing his helmet down and suddenly the benches are clearing.

To this day, Orioles fans loyally boo Josh Donaldson just for being the guy Machado got mad at one day in June 2014, but I think we all know it’s ridiculous, just like the bat toss that came two days later:

Fast forward to the 1:15 mark to get the camera angle that reveals the bat throw for what it was.

Actually, I still don’t know what it was to this day. What was he trying to do? Throw the bat at the pitcher, who had admittedly just blatantly thrown at Machado’s surgically-repaired knee? Throw the bat towards third base, where Donaldson had been two days before but wasn’t even playing at that point in a 10-0 game? Was the intent to hit either player or just “send a message” - and if the latter, what in the world was the message?

The only thing I know is he did it on purpose and it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen a baseball player do. Because Machado was on the Orioles, we of course wanted to make excuses for him. He is young and immature, he will grow out of stuff like that; the Athletics pitcher started throwing at him first; he didn’t deserve to be suspended for THAT many games/the Athletics pitcher deserved a longer suspension.

It’s four years later and the ridiculous, indefensible stuff is still going on and is on full display in this series. I don’t know him on a personal level. I don’t know whether he acts in this way out of intentional malice or simply out of uncaring neglect.

Even pundits outside of the usual group of scolds have been wondering over the course of this series if this behavior will cost Machado any money in free agency. Will it cause anyone to re-evaluate their plans if they can’t be sure what kind of attitude Machado will bring to their team?

It’s not the problem of Orioles fans any more, because the door shut on Machado having a long-term future here perhaps as far back as when he first freaked out on Donaldson. We would take all the baggage in a heartbeat, of course, to have one of the best players in baseball back on our favorite team, but that’s not happening, so it’ll be someone else’s task to explain the inexplicable drama.