That game and that incident

First of all, that was probably the more interesting game of the season so far even without the goings on in the bottom of the 8th. Both sides had chances to score, the game was close late, Foulke tried to give it up, I enjoyed watching this game.

However, my colleague said this last night, 'We are going to see a lot of comment (possibly on this blog) that says that if you get hit, you have the right to hit back.' Damn right we will...

What happened in the 8th has caused much debate, not least amongst Neil and myself. The way I saw it was a drunk moron slapped Gary Sheffield who was trying to make the play, and Sheff reacted a threw a punch back in his direction. Now where we disagree is on this basic principle, I think if someone hits you then you he loses his rights not to get lumped back. We argued for a good hour after the game on it and found that we just fundamentally disagree.

The police will no doubt speak to both the fan and the player and probably they'll both face misdemeanor charges, which'll be more a PR exercise than justice but what can you do?

Back to the game, A-Rod really looks lost at the plate. Tony Womack looks worse every time I see him at the plate. I commented last night that 'if the ball is above your eyes then you don't swing,' Tony chose to ignore my advice and proceeded to yet again strike out on a ball around his eye level.

Randy looked distinctly average for me, yet to prove himself as a Yankee with one good outings and two pretty disappointing efforts so far, however he is out pitching Javier Vazquez I suppose...

Loading the bases against Keith Foulke in the 9th, a player who I still contest in vastly over-rated, the Yankees with only the one out were unable to plate a run. Encouraging news for the Yanks though was the fact that we are getting players on base and it is only a matter of time before we start plating them with regularity.

Before the late incident, the big bone of contention was the home plate ump, now he was having a disappointing night anyway, but when he called a pitch to Sheffield ball four instead of strike three you just had to wonder what the guy was on. It was right down the pipe, just above centre, it was so clearly a strike that you couldn't even make an argument for it being ball four, this led to Jackson being tossed and Francona went soon afterwards. This umpire crew was flat out shocking all series, hope we don't get to see them again for a long, long time.

Incident update

Upon listening to the radio commentry on the game this afternoon, the YES cameras apparently clearly prove (which ESPN/NESN did not) that Sheffield was elbowed in the face. Sterling backs me and didn't blame for Sheffield for having a go back whereas Waldman backs up Neil's view, all about opinions isn't it?