With the Fenway crowd chanting "You're a cheater" to start the second inning, Dempster's first pitch to Rodriguez, an 89 mph fastball, sailed behind him, nearly catching him on the left leg. After two more inside fastballs, Dempster's 3-0 pitch nailed Rodriguez squarely on the left elbow pad. Rodriguez interpreted it as Dempster's way of saying he did not like how Rodriguez has handled the 211-game suspension for performance-enhancing drug violations that Rodriguez is appealing.
In the sixth, Rodriguez belted the second pitch he saw from Dempster in the inning into the center-field seats to cut the Boston lead to 6-4. The Yankees would go on to take the lead and would not relinquish it.
Now that everybody knows exactly what happened with the whole thing, here's a few different possible takes on the incident. First things first, I really feel that Ryan Dempster had no real right to go after A-Rod. Don't get me wrong, I can, to a certain degree, understand where Dempster is coming from in this instance. He feels A-Rod is a cheater and felt that Rodriguez needed to be taught some kind of lesson. All Dempster said was he was just trying to pitch inside. I really don't buy that for a minute, I think it was intentional to throw at him who are you kidding Dempster? The first pitch I think was just a warning pitch. Again why Dempster felt the need to do something like this is really beyond me, because he had no say in any of the investigation. What business is it of his whats going on between Rodriguez and the league? I get it if this had something to do with Dempster being unhappy that A-Rod is playing with all the steroid stuff going on but he really has no business taking a shot at him like that he really doesn't.
After the hit-by-pitch, home plate umpire Brian O'Nora issued the warnings as an enraged Girardi charged out of the Yankees' dugout, gesticulating wildly. Girardi was kicked out after one of his gestures, which looked like a left hook, nearly hit O'Nora. Now with Brian O'Nora, there's a double edge sword here too. First of all I give him credit for issuing the warnings to the two benches, just so that way this wouldn't get any further out of hand. The other side of the coin here is, he should have thrown Dempster out of the game right away. I just feel that Dempster threw at Rodriguez on purpose, and he should have been tossed right away after the plunk job. The first pitch that missed, that was a good call to just let it slid by. I would like to think that it should have been the end of it with Dempster. Once he hit Rodriguez, Dempster should have been thrown right out of the game without even another thought/ I'm sorry but there is no way in hell Dempster should have been allowed to stay in that ball game. So the umpires did a good job in squashing this kinda quickly, but it could have been a little better.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi had every possible right to flip out after this. He was livid and with good reason. So I give Girardi full credit for standing up to his players the way he has, not only during the plunk job last night, but during this whole steroids situation.
The final piece to this whole puzzle is Alex Rodriguez. I give him a lot of credit for how he handled it. First of all he just kept his cool after getting plunked and took his base without saying a word. And besides, he didn't have to say anything. Rodriguez got revenge in a big way when he homered of Dempster in the 6th inning. That's the best way to get revenge!
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