On the morning of July 24th, 2004 I was getting ready to go to the ballpark to get ready to face the New York Yankees. We had been struggling of lately, but we knew we could turn it around. The day was rainy enough that they were thinking about calling the game, but no one wanted that. Every single player in our dugout wanted to play that game. So myself and Johnny Damon went into Terry Francona’s office and asked him if they were going to call the game and he said “it looks that way.” So we told him we wanted to play that game. So we ended up playing the game.
We had Bronson Arroyo going for us. As everyone knew there is a bad history between us and the Yankees. However today it got a lot worse.
It was the top of the fifth inning and Alex Rodriguez was up. Bronson Arroyo was still pitching a good game for us, but he lost his command and hit Alex. Now in a normal game when a pitcher hits a batter the batter will take his base, but in a Red Sox and Yankee game every player thinks when they get hit its intentional. So A-Rod being A-Rod he stared down at my pitcher as he started walking to first. So I stood between them both. Then alex started yelling at bronson, but I was protecting my pitcher so I started yelling at him and then he started yelling at me. Then we were in eachothers faces. Then all hell broke loose, and next thing I know me and alex are on the ground fighting with every one else trying to break us up. Then finally the fighting stopped and alex and I got thrown out of the game for fighting. However in that one single game we won twice. We won the fight and we won the game later on.
The game was crucial for us because after that we went on a winning streak that helped us get into the playoffs. The only bad thing coming out of that fight was that myself and alex got suspended for 4 games and fined 2,000$.