BOSTON _ The Yankees were smart to put aside any thoughts of retaliation in the wake of Wednesday's benches-clearing melee at Fenway Park. As Aaron Boone stressed, the focus was back on winning games for the series finale, not exacting revenge for Tyler Austin's sore elbow.
The only problem with that strategy? The Yankees might be better at fighting than baseball at the moment. With everyone hypersensitive Thursday to malicious purpose pitches, Boone's crew forgot what to do with ones over the plate. Rick Porcello carried a no-hitter through a 45-minute rain delay and into the seventh inning.
Aaron Judge put an end to that humbling stretch by leading off the seventh with a double to the center-field triangle, but all that turned out to be was a face-saving gesture. After Thursday night's 6-3 loss, the final tally for the season's first Fenway series was two losses, a few fines and a five-game suspension for Austin (now under appeal).
And despite Yawkey Way being on high alert, two players were plunked. Sonny Gray spurred warnings to both teams in the first inning when he nailed Hanley Ramirez on the right hand with an inside fastball that wasn't far off the plate. Ramirez even tried to swing at it, but the injury knocked him from the game (wrist contusion).
Later, Porcello lost his early bid for a perfect game by hitting Giancarlo Stanton on the left elbow with two outs in the fourth. Given the circumstances, this obviously was another innocent mistake.
But after another 24 hours to study our well-worn copy of baseball's unwritten rules, the chapters dealing with Austin's slide and Joe Kelly's elbow-seeking fastball remained as ambiguous as they were late Wednesday night, when everybody first tried to attach blame for the twin fracases.
That, of course, depended on which clubhouse you resided in, with the Yankees maintaining Austin had done nothing wrong and the Red Sox insisting he got what he deserved (in coded language, obviously). Which left Major League Baseball to administer justice before Thursday's series finale _ sticking Kelly with a six-game suspension and Austin with five.
The swift penalties were a smart move by the Commissioner's Office, perhaps done with the hope it could prevent any further revenge-motivated behavior. In MLB's view, Kelly "intentionally" threw at Austin _ hence the extra game _ and Austin was penalized for charging the Sox reliever, as well as for his role in the ensuing fight.
Both immediately appealed their suspensions, and are likely to shave a game or two off those sentences. Regardless, the Yankees still were puzzled by what they believed was an "overreaction" by the Red Sox and felt like victims in the whole ugly mess.
"I have no qualms with anything that happened on our side," Brian Cashman said shortly after the suspensions were announced. "It's not something we caused. It's not something we created. We just got dragged into it."
The Yankees weren't exactly innocent bystanders. Austin did go into second base a little hot when he clipped Brock Holt's leg, but opinions vary on just how severe that infraction was. Even Holt said he didn't believe the slide was an intentional effort to hurt him, just a "bad slide." Still, that didn't stop Kelly from taking matters into his own right hand and drilling Austin with that 98-mph fastball.
"I didn't think it was a big deal," Boone said of the slide, adding, "Nowadays, it's two-hand touch."
The next day, Austin seemed fine, and his face was clear despite absorbing a few glancing blows from Kelly during the seventh-inning melee. The only lingering dust-up was between Sox manager Alex Cora and Phil Nevin, the Yankees' third-base coach, who traded barbs about the war of words between the dugouts.
Still, Boone was confident the bad blood would cool down by Thursday. The reason?
"Professionalism," Boone said. "Obviously you have to protect your own, but at the end of the day, the biggest thing is to win games."
The Yankees would like to be doing more of that, and as soon as possible. Fighting the Red Sox was fine for a night. Catching them, however, remains the No. 1 priority.
