Notebook | Red Sox's clubhouse scuffle hits home with M's travel director

Felix Hernandez, whose historic grand slam last week against the New York Mets was tempered considerably by a left ankle injury, has now landed on the disabled list.

The Mariners announced after Monday's 2-0 loss to Toronto that Hernandez was going on the DL, retroactive to June 24, and they were recalling left-handed pitcher Cesar Jimenez from Class AAA Tacoma.

Jimenez is 1-3 with five saves and a 3.55 earned-run average in 29 appearances.

Hernandez, who injured his leg in New York when Carlos Beltran slid into him while he was covering home on a wild pitch, is 6-5 with a 2.83 ERA in 16 starts.

The injury was termed a mild sprain. Hernandez was examined Monday by a team physician.

"Nothing new was found, but he threw a few pitches and his landing foot is still not right," Mariners manager Jim Riggleman said. "We're not going to put him out there until it's right.

"We're getting toward 15 days anyway. Instead of being a man short, we decided to bring someone up."

Red Sox's scuffle hits home

A weekend incident in Houston — in which Boston's Manny Ramirez pushed Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the ground in a dispute over tickets — not surprisingly caught the eye of Ron Spellecy.

Spellecy is the Mariners' director of team travel — a position for which arranging travel is only part of the responsibility. The traveling secretary also is often asked by players for personal favors, such as acquiring tickets for friends and family.

The scuffle in the Red Sox's clubhouse happened after Ramirez had requested 16 tickets from McCormick on Saturday for that day's game with the Astros. When McCormick told him it might not be possible, Ramirez yelled, "Just do your job!"

An argument ensued in which Ramirez pushed down McCormick, who is in his early 60s. Ramirez apologized, and McCormick said he accepted.

"I thought it was uncalled for," Spellecy said. "We're just trying to do our jobs."

Major League Baseball uses a service called CompTix, in which each player is provided six tickets for every game.

"If you want more, you borrow them from your fellow players," Spellecy said. "You want 16 tickets, go borrow them from other players. Don't ask me to do your job.

"When a player comes and asks you, you try to do what you can for every player. We all have those issues at some point in time. We get guys on day games after night games who will forget to do tickets. We take care of it. We make it happen for them. We don't have to, but we all do."

Asked if he had ever had any confrontations, he smiled and said, "Not that I'm going to talk about."

This is Spellecy's 11th season with the Mariners, and he said the current squad is low maintenance.

"We have a great bunch here," he said. "I've had zero problems."

Sign 'em up

Wednesday is a big day in baseball — the first day clubs can sign players as young as 16 years old from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. They have to be at least 17 by Sept. 6.

This year's plum is 16-year-old Dominican pitcher Michael Inoa, who according to Baseball America has already agreed to accept a $4.25 million bonus from the Oakland A's. That's the largest bonus ever given to an international player not from Cuba.

The 6-foot-7 Inoa, who throws 94 mph, had also been pursued by the Mariners, who have built a fruitful Latin operation under the command of Bob Engle, vice president of international operations.

Notes

• With Hernandez out, the Mariners will turn to their bullpen for tonight's start. Riggleman said Monday that Ryan Rowland-Smith will draw the job. After that, it's anyone's guess.

"If Ryan's feeling strong, he might have an upper limit of four or five innings," Riggleman said. "If he's throwing a lot of pitches and Toronto's on him pretty good, it might be one or two. We're hoping he's in there three or four anyway, to take a load off some of the guys in the bullpen."

• Riggleman on the speculation that the M's might cut Richie Sexson loose before this homestand: "Until you said that, I hadn't heard anything like that.

"We're just putting Richie out there, waiting for him to get it going. ... We're being patient with him, and hopefully he'll turn it on soon."

For the record

Streak: L1

Home: 15-25

Road: 16-26

vs. AL West: 10-14

vs. L.A.: 3-6

vs. Oakland: 3-2

vs. Texas: 4-6

vs. AL East: 8-18

vs. AL Cent.: 4-10

vs. NL: 9-9

vs. LHP: 8-13

vs. RHP: 23-38

Day: 9-17

Night: 22-34

One-run: 8-15

Extra innings: 2-2

Home attendance

Monday's crowd: 30,179

Season total: 1,134,870

Biggest crowd: 46,334 (March 31)

Smallest crowd: 15,818 (May 6)

Average (40 dates): 28,372

2007 average (40 dates): 31,015