Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 13

In today’s edition, one of the most adventurous and unforgettable days in the history of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry occurred in Game 3 which featured Pedro Martinez tossing Don Zimmer to the grass, a fight in the Yankees bullpen, and a Yankees victory.

Mayhem.

There really is no other word better-suited to describe what took place at Fenway Park on the late afternoon and early evening of Oct. 11, 2003 during Game 3 of the ALCS.

When Yankees starter Roger Clemens was asked on the off day when the teams moved from New York to Boston about whether he ever distilled his matchups with Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez down to “me against him” Clemens just smiled and said, “No, because we’re not in a boxing ring.”

If Clemens was truly a prophet, he would have said “Wrestlemania ring” because 24 hours later, that’s what the Fens resembled during an emotionally-charged, testosterone-fueled, fury-filled game that only Vince McMahon could have loved. When the two teams weren’t screaming obscenities and pushing and shoving at each other, when Pedro wasn’t firing fastballs at Yankee batters or flinging bench coach Don Zimmer to the ground, and when the Yankees relievers weren’t beating up a Fenway grounds crew worker out in the bullpen, the Yankees found just enough offense and clutch pitching to win 4-3 and take a two games to one lead.

“When this series began everyone knew it was going to be quite a battle, very emotional, with a lot of intensity, but I think we’ve upgraded it from a battle to a war,” Red Sox manager Grady Little said.

There have been so many flashpoints that you could point to that would illustrate just how heated the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has been through the years. And now there was this chaotic day, as ugly and unfortunate as it was stupendously fascinating, a new chapter to this never ending baseball holy war.

In the second game the teams played against each other - May 8, 1903 at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds in Boston - there was a kerfuffle when New York’s Dave Fultz hit a ground ball to first, Red Sox pitcher George Winters went to cover the bag, and when the two men arrived simultaneously, Fultz, a former football player, forgot what sport he was playing and bowled Winters over. And so it began.

In the 100 years since that frosty beginning and the madness that ensued on this day, these two franchises had been staring at each other through squinted eyes, sabers sharpened and at the ready. Their contentious rivalry mirrored how the two cities felt about each other, so it was never surprising when bedlam broke out during a Yankees-Red Sox game.

Yankees outfielder Jake Powell and Red Sox player-manager Joe Cronin fought on the field and underneath the stands in 1938; Billy Martin and Jimmy Piersall brawled under the stands in 1952; Boston’s Jim Lonborg and New York’s Thad Tillotson got into a beanball war and wound up slugging it out in 1967; Carlton Fisk had a longstanding hatred of Thurman Munson which led to one notable fight in 1972, and Fisk also duked it out with Lou Piniella in 1976 with the undercard that night being Graig Nettles’ injurious body slam of Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee. But given what was on the line, this was a new standard for discontent and loathing, one which defined the escalation of the rivalry in 2003 and 2004.

It all started in the top of the fourth when Martinez - once again solidifying his campaign to become the most hated opponent in Yankees history - drilled Karim Garcia in the back with a pitch.

It was Garcia’s RBI single in the second that got the Yankees on the scoreboard after Clemens had yielded two quick runs in the bottom of the first. Then Derek Jeter homered in the third to tie the score, and Martinez got into more trouble in the fourth when Jorge Posada walked, Nick Johnson singled, and Hideki Matsui delivered a go-ahead RBI double.

Now trailing 3-2, Martinez was seething, so Jason Varitek went out to either calm him down, or get him more riled up. You’d have to say it was the latter because his next pitch - which Joe Torre said was absolutely on purpose - found its mark on Garcia’s body to load the bases.

“I don’t think there was any question, in my mind - I know there’s no question in my mind - that Pedro hit him on purpose,” Torre said. “Second and third, nobody out, left-hand hitter, right-hand hitter on deck, he can thread a needle at any time he wants. He was probably frustrated with the fact that we hit some balls hard. I didn’t care for that.”

Garcia went to first pissed and in pain, and when the next batter, Alfonso Soriano, hit a ground ball that became a double play, Garcia went in hard on pivot man Todd Walker at second base which drew the ire of the Boston second baseman. “He started his slide after the bag,” Walker said. “The intent was what I got upset about.”

As Garcia was jogging off the field he had words with Martinez, and several Yankees came out to the area in front of their dugout to yell at Martinez. Posada was particularly demonstrative, at which point Pedro pointed to his head as if to say the next time Posada got into the batters’ box, he better duck. Up in the broadcast booth, Tim McCarver couldn’t believe it and called out Martinez, saying that was “just wrong.”

“To start taunting people that you’re going to start drilling them in the head, that’s not good,” the Yankees’ Jason Giambi said.

Martinez would later try to explain away his gesture to Posada, saying what he meant was not that he would go head hunting, but that he would remember everything Posada was saying. No one was buying that.

Regardless of what he actually meant, now the fuse was officially lit and it was only a matter of time before the dynamite exploded, though the ultimate detonation should not have happened when it did. Manny Ramirez led off the bottom of the fourth for Boston and after getting ahead 1-2, Clemens threw a pitch that was up in the zone but nowhere close to Ramirez’s head.

Still, Ramirez leaped out of the way as if the ball was about to decapitate him. He got up barking and pointing at Clemens and took a few steps toward the mound, and like the start of the Kentucky Derby, the gates opened and here came the benches and bullpen at full speed.

“You’re doing yourself a disservice to even write about it or for me to even talk about,” Clemens said when he was asked afterward by reporters if it was a purpose pitch. “I was trying to strike him out inside. The pitch was actually over the plate I think. I was okay with it until I looked up and he was coming towards me, mouthing me. Anybody is going to react when that happens.”

As is usually the case with baseball “fights” nothing really happened beyond some pushing and shoving and a whole lot of swearing, that is until the 72-year-old Zimmer came waddling toward Martinez. Now, Zimmer probably wasn’t a threat to the pitcher 40 years his junior, but Pedro wasn’t taking any chances. He protected himself by grabbing hold of each side of Zimmer’s bald head and flinging him to the ground.

Shockingly, the Yankees did not rain holy hell on Martinez, not that they weren’t furious. In actuality, while Martinez came out of that looking horrible, Zimmer is the one who started it because it sure looked like he wasn’t coming at Martinez to exchange phone numbers.

Martinez offered a mea culpa, saying, “I would never, ever, ever, ever, regardless of what he said or what he did, raise my hand to him. I wish no man would have to apologize. It’s not a good feeling to have to apologize.”

In this case, Martinez was likely telling the truth and he truly was sorry for what happened. If he had it to do over again, simply sidestepping the old man probably would have sufficed, at least long enough for the Yankees to grab hold of their fiery coach and calm him down, rather than what they ended up having to do - picking him up off the ground.

To his credit, the next day - when Game 4 was rained out - Zimmer met with reporters and through teary eyes owned up to his end of it. “I’m embarrassed of what happened yesterday. I’m embarrassed for the Yankees, the Red Sox, the fans, the umpires and my family. That’s all I have to say, I’m sorry.”

Once the game resumed, Clemens and Martinez were untouchable. Clemens finished six innings, the last five which saw him allow no runs on two hits and a walk. At one point he retired 14 out of 15 batters before getting into a mini-jam in the sixth. Here, Johnny Damon singled and Walker walked, but Torre stayed with Clemens and he struck out Nomar Garciaparra and got Ramirez to hit into a double play that preserved the 4-2 lead.

Red Sox fans had put aside their hatred of the traitor, Clemens, for one day back in September when they realized it might be the last time he would pitch in their fair city and they gave the man his due for the 11 mostly outstanding years he had given them. But as he walked off the mound on this day, they didn’t need their hands to give him an ovation, just the middle finger on each.

Martinez lasted seven innings and after the fourth run scored, he retired the last 10 men he faced, and as he cooled his jets in the dugout, he watched as his team nearly put him in line for the victory.

Felix Heredia replaced Clemens and immediately gave up a walk to David Ortiz and a single to Kevin Millar, so with men on first and third and no outs, Torre yanked him and called on Jose Contreras to put out the fire. Contreras had quickly risen to near the top of the collective Red Sox fans’ shit list when he spurned their team back in the winter, and for the third time in the series he found a way to climb a little higher.

Contreras had admitted when he first signed with the Yankees that he really had no idea how crazy their rivalry was with the Red Sox. He started to get a feel for it during the regular season when he got hammered in his only two appearances against Boston, both in Fenway, and each time the leather-lunged fans had jeered him mercilessly. With his eyes now wide open, he was fully immersed in the intensity and his comfort level and confidence had grown exponentially since his Aug. 29 start when he gave up seven earned runs inside four innings which pushed his season ERA to 5.09.

In the Yankees’ Game 1 loss he struck out the side in the ninth, and in Game 2 he relieved Andy Pettitte with a man on in the seventh and worked out of that, then threw a 1-2-3 eighth to help secure the Yankees victory. Those games had been in New York. This one was in Boston, and the Fenway Faithful - already stoked by the day’s events - did its best to get inside his head.

It didn’t work. He immediately coaxed Trot Nixon into a double play, and though Ortiz scored to make it 4-3, Contreras got Varitek to pop out to keep it right there.

Despite that fine work, Torre was taking no chances in a one-run game so he turned to his sledgehammer, Mariano Rivera, and tasked him with recording the final six outs. The first three were ridiculously easy as he needed just eight pitches to set down Damon, Walker and Garciaparra. The next three - Ramirez, Ortiz and Millar, the heart of the order in the bottom of the ninth - had no business being easy, but they were.

The only issue was that before Rivera could get to his 11-pitch annihilation of those three, he had to wait out a delay because more mayhem was erupting out in right field.

A grounds crew member who was stationed in the Yankees bullpen was going a little over the top in his imploring of the Red Sox to rally for the victory. He was waving a Cowboy Up towel to get the crowd going - as if that crowd really needed coaxing. Jeff Nelson told him to take it down a level and when the guy, Paul Williams, became belligerent, well, shit happened.

“He started jumping in my face and I couldn’t have that,” Nelson said. “I pushed him back and he took a swing at me. I ducked and then everyone (was on him). You know, if he wants to root for the Red Sox, that’s fine, but go over to their bullpen.”

Seeing what was happening just behind him, right fielder Garcia ran back and jumped over the wall to join the fracas and in doing so, cut open his hand while punching Williams in the mouth which forced him to leave the game and also miss Game 4. Posada sprinted all the way out from his spot behind the plate, though by the time he got there, police who were also stationed near the bullpen had intervened.

“I’m in the dugout and all of a sudden I see my catcher running out to the bullpen,” Torre said.

Williams took the worst of it and wound up going to the hospital to be treated for lacerations on his back where some of the Yankees apparently used their spikes in a way they were not intended to be used. That prompted an investigation by the Boston Police Department and it announced that pending their findings, charges might be filed on Nelson and Garcia for their roles in the fight.

It was merely the final act on a day of unmatched theatrics, a day that would have had all the previous pugilists through the 100 years in this rivalry nodding their heads with smirks on their faces.

The Yankee smirks, of course, were a little wider because, well, as usual the Yankees won the game and the Red Sox did not.

“It’s over,” Jeter said. “This issue is over. It’ll linger because you’ll write about it, but it’s over.”

Twenty years later, no one has ever forgotten it.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: After a day of rain cooled tempers, the Red Sox pulled even by winning Game 4 as Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball again frustrated the Yankees and he outdueled Mike Mussina.