This was a close encounter for the third time
Though the umpires hadn't issued warnings before the game, by the time Kevin Youkilis took a pitch from Joba Chamberlain near his head, fingers were pointing at both benches. No one seemed amused, least of all Youkilis, who glared at the mound as the managers emerged from the dugouts.
That's when the Red Sox and Yankees were warned. For those who haven't been paying attention, it's not like this was the first time.
No, it was the third. It started last August in New York, when Chamberlain threw behind Youkilis twice on consecutive pitches, both 98-mile-per-hour fastballs. Chamberlain again threw inside on Youkilis July 6, narrowly missing him, and prompting a couple of steps toward the mound by the first baseman and the ire of the Sox dugout. After the second incident, Youkilis said, "What I want to say, I'm not going to say."
This time? Youkilis didn't stick around to talk about it. But his teammates were less than thrilled after watching him go sprawling on a pitch that hit his bat as he fell.
"Inside?" Josh Beckett asked. "It was at his head."
It was a questionable situation to be throwing at a member of the Sox, given that Youkilis was leading off the seventh inning with Chamberlain nursing a 1-0 lead. But to the Sox, coincidence only goes so far. Especially since Chamberlain had walked just one in six innings.
"I definitely think something was going on," Manny Delcarmen said. "Those pitches, you definitely don't throw at somebody's head. That's messing with somebody's career like that. Unfortunately, it's happened to Youk three times. It's part of the game to go at somebody, but you just don't do that.
"I honestly think he should have [gotten ejected]. It's gotten ridiculous right now. Youk is a big part of our club. To let him get away with that . . . "
Chamberlain maintained that the situation dictated that he throw a strike.
"It's 1-0 and I'm two balls and no strikes, I've got to throw a strike," he said. "I don't want to get the leadoff runner on. That's it. I'm trying to throw strikes. I'm not trying to do anything else. It's 1-0. Nobody wants the ball right there, but at the end of the day, it's 1-0 and I'm trying to get the win."
Which he did with perhaps his best start of the season - seven innings, three hits, one walk, nine strikeouts. That strikeout total included two of Youkilis: an awkward swing on a back-door slider in the first and another swinging whiff that ended the seventh-inning confrontation.
"He has great command until Youk gets in there," said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who had seemed to shrug off questions about Chamberlain and Youkilis before the game, saying players move on from that sort of thing but it tends to stick with the media. "Why would I want to say something about that?" he had said.
He was asked after the game if it's safe to say the Chamberlain-Youkilis rivalry isn't being made up by reporters. "I don't know how to answer that," Francona said.
There was concern about what could happen if one of those blazing fastballs connected with Youkilis's head. Mike Lowell said Chamberlain's velocity could result in a scary situation.
"The bottom line is it happens to be the same guy every time," Sean Casey said. "He's got pinpoint control all through the game; he threw behind him in New York. If you're in the big leagues, you keep missing that bad, come on.
"The fact that it's Youkilis every time, it definitely raises flags."
Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.
