Josh Donaldson recalls infamous Blue Jays-Rangers brawl involving Jose Bautista

It's been 10 years since former Toronto Blue Jays star Jose Bautista took a mean right hook from Rougned Odor.

There was already quite the rivalry between the Blue Jays and Rangers after facing off in the ALDS back in 2015. The Blue Jays came out on top in that best-of-five series, but the hatred between the two sides didn't go anywhere.

It reached a boiling point on May 15, 2016, when Odor took exception to a hard slide from Bautista at second base. Keep in mind, Bautista was already public-enemy number one as far as the Rangers were concerned due to his bat flip in that 2015 playoff series.

On this day in 2016, Rougned Odor landed a right hook on Jose Bautista in Texas. pic.twitter.com/MI2WaYwWpk

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) May 15, 2026

It was one of the cleaner punches landed in MLB history, though it didn't seem to phase Bautista, who, after the game, said that it "takes a bit of a bigger man" to knock him down.

As fiery as that situation was, we never heard much of it afterward from either team. That changed earlier this week, as Josh Donaldson dove into it with Russell Martin and Arash Madani on The Get It Done League podcast.

Donaldson explained that what frustrated him and his teammates so much wasn't due to what happened, but the way in which the Rangers, and particularly Odor, went about it.

"That's why we got pissed. We just played [them] in Toronto, and then a week or so later we went to Texas to play, and they waited until the last at bat in the last game. We thought they could have done something at our place, or if they were going to do it it would have been in the first at-bat in Arlington... we all thought it was pretty bad that they waited until the last at-bat."

Donaldson, perhaps with slight bias, didn't take issue with Bautista's slide, believing the six-time All Star could have delivered a much more significant blow if he had wanted. What Donaldson did take issue with, however, was Odor supposedly attempting to throw the baseball at Bautista's head.

"He could've broke Odor's leg if he wanted to," Donaldson said. "What Odor did was nasty. If you go look at the throw, he tried to hit [Bautista] in the face with the ball. He dropped all the weight down. That's why the ball went that far down the first base line."

Interestingly enough, the Blue Jays would meet the Rangers once again in the playoffs that very same year for a rematch in the ALDS. The Blue Jays once again came out victorious, sweeping the Rangers in the best-of-five series.

Though it's been a decade, this continues to be one of the most talked about moments in Blue Jays history. It clearly still weighs on the players minds, too, indicating just how intense that rivalry was at that time.