DUSTIN PEDROIA

A POWERFUL CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM
The Yankees top the Sox in a circus atmosphere

June 1, 2007 ... Fenway Park should have had a tent thrown over it, and not just because of the storm clouds that caused the start of tonight's 9-5 Red Sox loss to the Bombers to be delayed by 30 minutes. There were grown men strutting about, wearing blond wigs and falsies and carrying signs that read, "I'm with A-Rod." Entire sections adjacent to the Yankees' dugout wore little princess Halloween masks. Johnny Damon was booed. Derek Jeter was booed. No one was booed louder than Alex Rodriguez, who tossed a ball to a fan in the stands, only to have it flung back on the field.

The Sox were the ones left to clean up the mess left by Tim Wakefield and the elephants. The carny act continued right to the end, though, as Yankees reliever Scott Proctor knocked down hot-hitting Kevin Youkilis like one of those milk bottles off a barrel in a game of chance. Proctor's pitch grazed Youkilis in the helmet in the bottom of the ninth and emptied the benches. Home plate umpire Brian O'Nora ejected Proctor and kept the principals at bay, but Youkilis was clearly shaken, even though he chose to hold his tongue after the game.

Five batters in all were hit by pitches last night. Wakefield got Josh Phelps with a knuckler in the fourth, Kyle Snyder hit Rodriguez in the left shoulder in the fourth, and Javier Lopez hit Robinson Cano in the right shoulder in the ninth. Mike Lowell was hit in the top of his left hand by Chien-Ming Wang in the third, before Proctor got Youkilis, who wound up on his back. Yankees catcher Jorge Posada walked down to first base to talk with Youkilis after Proctor's ejection, but Youkilis had no interest in discussing what was said.

Proctor, meanwhile, protested his innocence, even as the services of Mariano Rivera were required before the Bombers could come away with their third win in the last four meetings between the teams. The Yankees took two of three last week, then lost five in a row while the Sox were winning five straight, a big reason they're 12 1/2 games in arrears in the American League East.

Cano hit a two-run home run off Wakefield in the second; that ball, too, was rejected as a souvenir, and hurled back onto the playing field. Torre, normally the epitome of cool, was ejected for arguing with an umpire during a pitching change in the fifth. Torre no doubt had peeked at a TV replay that showed third base umpire Jerry Crawford muffing Bobby Abreu's steal of third, Crawford ringing up Abreu instead before giving Torre the thumb.

Meanwhile, on the Sox' side, there was Manny the Pantomimer, standing at first base, gesturing incredulously to the dugout after third base coach DeMarlo Hale elected to hold up Youkilis at third on Ramirez's base hit in the second, when this was still a game. Ramirez appeared irate because with two outs, he didn't like the chances of J.D. Drew coming through with a hit with the bases loaded

In the midst of the often-unintentional hilarity, two red flags went up for the Sox. After being hit, Lowell remained in the game for another inning, but Eric Hinske came out to play first base, with Youkilis shifting to third. Lowell was X-rayed, according to a press box announcement, and they came back negative. Then Drew, who was just 1 for 13 on the homestand and had failed to get the ball out of the infield in his previous 11 at-bats, was lifted in the sixth for Wily Mo Pena. He had a strained right hamstring; Francona said he was day to day.

Wakefield was grim-faced after his outing, one in which he yielded eight runs in 3 2/3 innings. Wakefield walked six, including three straight in the second inning. The Yankees took advantage of Wakefield's wildness, which against the Bombers has become a chronic condition. In his last four starts against the New Yorkers, Wakefield has walked 22 batters in just 20 2/3 innings. Last night, he threw more balls (43) than strikes (38). He is 0-3 with a 10.93 ERA against the Yankees this season.

When he wasn't walking Yankees, they were hitting the ball a long way. Cano hit a two-run home run in the second over the bullpen. Bobby Abreu followed with a double and scored on Damon's bases-loaded walk.

The Sox answered with two runs in the bottom of the second, the big hit a double by Dustin Pedroia, and tied the score in the third on another double by Pedroia, who has hit safely in 11 straight games.

But the Yankees sent 10 men to the plate in the fourth, when they knocked out Wakefield and heaped some additional abuse on Snyder. Cano singled and advanced to second on a passed ball. Abreu walked and Phelps was hit by a pitch. Cano scored on a wild pitch, and a single by Melky Cabrera scored Abreu. Another passed ball, and Phelps scurried home to make it 6-3. Then it was a reload, as Wakefield walked Hideki Matsui and Snyder entered and hit the first batter he faced, Rodriguez, to load the bases again. Posada promptly unloaded them with a double, and it was 9-3.

The Sox have lost two games in a row just twice this season; on each occasion, Curt Schilling pitched the next game and won.

Reliever Mike Timlin will make two more appearances with Triple A Pawtucket, then join the Red Sox next weekend in Arizona. That was the tentative plan outlined yesterday by manager Terry Francona, who watched Timlin pitch for the PawSox the night before.

Second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who hit .415 last month, has positioned himself nicely to be Boston's second consecutive American League rookie of the month, joining left-handed reliever Hideki Okajima, who was voted the league's top rookie in April. Pedroia extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a 3-for-4 outing last night. He struck out looking against Kyle Farnsworth in the eighth, just his second whiff in the last 20 games. He has just nine strikeouts in 142 plate appearances this season, one more than Alex Cora for fewest on the team, and Cora has 56 fewer plate appearances. Last season, in 111 games with Pawtucket, Pedroia whiffed just 27 times, and in 1,040 career minor league at-bats, struck out just 77 times.

Mike Lowell's 22-game hitting streak at Fenway Park, which extended to April 13, was tied for the second longest such single-season streak in the last 50 years, according to Trent McCotter of the Society of American Baseball Research. Nomar Garciaparra had a 31-game hitting streak at Fenway in 2003. Tony Armas had a 22-game streak in 1984. Lowell was replaced in the field to start the fifth inning after being hit by a Chien-Ming Wang pitch in the third. Lowell was 0 for 1, ending the streak. Kevin Youkilis extended his hitting streak to 23 games with a sixth-inning single.