Joe Torre wasn't kidding when he said this would be a circus, and the reason why the Yankees left Roger Clemens at home.
Fenway Park should have had a tent thrown over it, and not just because of the storm clouds that caused the start of last night's 9-5 Red Sox loss to the Bombers to be delayed by 30 minutes. About the only sideshows missing from this one were Zip the Pinhead, Tom Thumb, and Ula, the Painproof Rubber Girl.
There were grown men strutting about, wearing blond wigs and falsies and carrying signs that read, "I'm with A-Rod." Entire sections adjacent to the Yankees' dugout wore little princess Halloween masks. Johnny Damon was booed. Derek Jeter was booed. No one was booed louder than Alex Rodriguez, who tossed a ball to a fan in the stands, only to have it flung back on the field.
The Sox were the ones left to clean up the mess left by Tim Wakefield and the elephants. The carny act continued right to the end, though, as Yankees reliever Scott Proctor knocked down hot-hitting Kevin Youkilis like one of those milk bottles off a barrel in a game of chance.
Proctor's pitch grazed Youkilis in the helmet in the bottom of the ninth and emptied the benches. Home plate umpire Brian O'Nora ejected Proctor and kept the principals at bay, but Youkilis was clearly shaken, even though he chose to hold his tongue after the game.
But Sox owner John W. Henry was less diplomatic.
"Proctor's intent was clear and disturbing," Henry wrote in an e-mail after the game.
"If this is about getting hit, guys, I have no comment, it's over, tomorrow's another game, that's it," said Youkilis, who earlier extended his hitting streak to 23 games with an infield hit. "That's final. I don't want to hear another word about getting hit by a pitch."
Five batters in all were hit by pitches last night. Wakefield got Josh Phelps with a knuckler in the fourth, Kyle Snyder hit Rodriguez in the left shoulder in the fourth, and Javier Lopez hit Robinson Cano in the right shoulder in the ninth. Mike Lowell was hit in the top of his left hand by Chien-Ming Wang in the third, before Proctor got Youkilis, who wound up on his back.
Yankees catcher Jorge Posada walked down to first base to talk with Youkilis after Proctor's ejection, but Youkilis had no interest in discussing what was said. "It's over," he said. "What's on the field stays on the field. That's all I've got to say about that."
Proctor, meanwhile, protested his innocence, even as the services of Mariano Rivera were required before the Bombers could come away with their third win in the last four meetings between the teams. The Yankees took two of three last week, then lost five in a row while the Sox were winning five straight, a big reason they're 12 1/2 games in arrears in the American League East.
