No Shortage Of Drama These Next Four Games

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It feels like it's been a long time since the Ryan Dempster-Alex Rodriguez beanball incident took place.  In reality it's been less than 3 weeks, but as almost everybody hypothesized right after that fateful game on August 18th, the Yankees have used that moment and that game as a rallying point.  They've picked up 18 wins in the 26 games since and have been slowly marching their way towards the front of the Wild Card line.  This weekend's series is indescribably important as it starts an 11-game stretch away from the dregs of the American League and against tough AL East competition.  The Yanks need to go at least 7-4 to stay within striking distance of the Rays and keep their playoff hopes alive.

They also have a little score to settle with their rivals from that 8/18 game, a score they didn't get the chance to settle when Brian O'Nora went quick trigger with the bench warnings.
There's a code to hitting batters and hit batter retaliation in baseball and that code was shattered by Dempster.  Throwing 4 consecutive pitches at somebody is dangerous, irresponsible, and downright bush league.  No self respecting team would sit back and take that, no matter who the player on the receiving end of the HBP was and what the rest of the league, country, or world thought of him.  The Yankees certainly weren't in the mood to take it at the time and I guarantee some of those angry feelings from that game still linger.  A wrong needs to be righted and a Red Sock needs to pay.

The team's situation changing for the better in the last 2+ weeks has made retaliation less of a priority than it might have been otherwise.  The Yankees top 3,000 priorities are still to go out and win every game they can and they've been saying all the right things about keeping their focus on that goal of winning.  But make no mistake, the players in the locker room haven't forgotten about what happened and they damn sure haven't forgiven.  One of their own got done dirty and they didn't get the chance to even up the score.  They're obviously not going to come out and advertise their intentions, but there should be plenty of chances to take that pound of flesh back in the next 4 days and I would be absolutely shocked if that chance isn't taken.

Dempster should consider himself lucky he pitched last night and gets to skip pitching in this series in what would be a hostile YS3.  Instead he'll have a good seat to watch one of his teammates pay for his mistake.  Hopefully whoever takes the fastball bullet is more of a man about it than Dempster was, accepts it, takes his base, and moves on with things being even.  If not, this series could be really fun.

P.S.- Never forget.