He didn’t have to do it.
Rhys Hoskins could have put on his Patagonia trucker’s cap and his golf shorts and fled from the Phillies’ clubhouse, slipped behind the wheel, turned up the radio and put his confrontation with a Phillies fan out of his mind.
That would have left his teammates and his manager to explain his unacceptable actions. That would have given sports talk shows around the region, and around the country, fill-in-the-blank fodder for at least 24 hours.
Hoskins didn’t run away. He stayed. After his worst moment in his brief career as a Phillie, Hoskins stayed in the clubhouse in order to face a phalanx of reporters and explain why he had a heated exchange of words with a patron seated above the Phillies’ dugout in the sixth inning.