A little communication can go a long way.

On Tuesday, Kansas City pitcher Jorge Lopez drilled Oakland’s Mark Canha, which Canha viewed suspiciously given that it came the next pitch after teammate Matt Olson drilled a massive, game-tying homer.

Canha, an emphatic bat-flipper, is no stranger to being drilled. (He’s tied for the American League lead with 17 HBPs this season.) Still, this one stuck in his craw. He was stewing over it after the game when teammate Homer Bailey approached him, phone extended.

Bailey, who played for the Royals last season, had just received a text from Lopez, and wanted to share it. It was, said Canha in the San Francisco Chronicle, “a pretty apologetic text message.”

“[Lopez] said he knows it looked bad, and he promises he wasn’t trying to do anything,” Canha said. “That says something. I’m not a big retaliation guy. I just really want to move on.”

Even A’s manager Bob Melvin, who’d described Lopez’s approach as “weak” immediately afterward, softened his stance. “You get a little emotional after games,” he said in retrospect. “I probably said something out of turn, but I don’t know what anyone’s thinking. I’m just saying what it looked like at the time.”

If only the rest of us could get along so well.