One day after Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon hit Adam Lind on the elbow with a pitch -- in a game in which the Toronto slugger hit three homers -- Blue Jays starter Roy Halladay threw a fastball that drilled David Ortiz on the elbow with his first pitch of the second inning. Ortiz remained in the game, and said after going 0-for-3 with three strikeouts that he was fine, and that the plunking was "over."
Red Sox reliever Billy Wagner, however, expressed displeasure at seeing the Boston D.H. get drilled, and in the fact that Halladay was merely warned by home plate umpire Mike DiMuro after doing so. Wagner suggested that the game situation on Tuesday -- a one-run game, and a closer who was rusty from not having pitched in six days -- demonstrated that the Sox weren't trying to hit Lind, and so the act of apparent retaliation by the Blue Jays did not sit well with the left-handed Sox bullpen member.
"I don’t know what they’re thinking there. If it had been any other pitcher besides [Halladay], they’d get tossed. I think it’s a little bush league, but it’s the way it is,” said Sox reliever Billy Wagner. “When you’ve got as much experience as [Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston] and those guys do over there, you can read between the lines and say it was 8-7, we’re not going to hit a guy when we’re trying to win the game. I think it’s pretty cut and dried.
“They handle their business their way. But you bring in your closer to try to get work in. He hasn’t pitched in five or six days. He’s trying to pitch him in because the guy’s been wearing you out away, and then the ball gets inside and hits him,” Wagner continued. “It’s just not knowing the game [to think that Papelbon threw at Lind intentionally].”
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[1] http://fullcount.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/2009/10/01/docs-surgical-strike-blue-jays-retaliate-by-drilling-ortiz/