When I wrote at the outset of the Yankees-Red Sox ALCS matchup that this series would bring out the worst in everyone, I envisioned mouthy owners, rabid media, and dangerously rowdy fans. I never pictured things devolving to the point of affecting the game on the field. But Saturday’s Game Three at Fenway Park devolved from a marquee pitching matchup for the ages — Roger Clemens vs. Pedro Martinez — into an ugly theater of the absurd which featured a beanball, a hard slide, taunting, bench clearing, violence which spilled to include 72-year old coaches and groundskeepers, and enough “fuck yous” to give a prudish lipreader a heart attack.

For a Yankee fan, this had to be the most satisfying non-clinching victory of the Joe Torre era. Not only did the Yanks beat Pedro Martinez in a playoff game, they caused the diva ace of the Red Sox to implode and humliate himself in front of his home crowd. Martinez’s and fellow diva Manny Ramirez’s stereotypically hotheaded actions put machismo ahead of winning the baseball game, while the notoriously hot Clemens overcame a rocky start and corraled his emotions long enough to coolly dispatch the Boston side.

The game began as though it would be a rerun of the two aces’ 1999 ALCS matchup at Fenway, when Clemens was shelled en route to a 13-1 Sox win (a pyrrhic one at that, as it was their only victory of the series). Thanks to some slack defense, Clemens was touched for two runs in the first, and had it not been for a strikeout-throwout DP to end the inning, the hole he dug might have been worse. As it was, spotting Martinez and the Sox a two-run lead was enough to whip the Boston crowd into a frenzy.

But Clemens settled into a groove thereafter, and the Yanks refused to roll over. Jorge Posada led off the second with a double to left-center, and two outs later, Karim Garcia punched an RBI single to put the Yanks on the board. They evened the score in the third as Derek Jeter launched a curve ball that didn’t curve for a home run over the Green Monster. Martinez was relying on his changeup and breaking stuff, steering clear of a meager fastball that couldn’t break 90 MPH — clearly, he was missing his best stuff.

But Pedro showed his fastball in the fourth inning, an inning that may yet rank with the tenth inning of a certain World Series game for infamy in Red Sox lore. Posada worked a leadoff walk from Martinez, and Nick Johnson followed with a single. Hideki Matsui then laced Martinez’s first pitch for a ground-rule double to left, scoring Posada to take a 3-2 lead and putting runners on second and third. Then Garcia came to bat. For showing the temerity to drive in a run off of The Exalted Pedro, Garcia drew a first-pitch fastball behind the head which hit him between the numbers as he ducked. This inexcusable salvo — throwing at the head is aggressive, but throwing behind the head is an Act of War — drew heated exchanges between the batter and the pitcher, ratcheting the tension up several notches.

The bases now loaded, Alfonso Soriano stepped in. With a chance to put Pedro away, the free-swinging Sori slapped a grounder to Nomar Garciaparra, and while the Sox turned the DP, Garcia’s hard-and-late slide into second baseman Todd Walker cranked the tension even more. The two tussled briefly, while Johnson scored to make it 4-2. At this point, Posada and Martinez began screaming and gesturing to each other, with the Sox pitcher pointing to his head as if to say, “I’ll hit you, too.” The Yankee dugout, particularly Clemens, looked ready to explode.

Martinez escaped the inning via an Enrique Wilson popup (the rotund futilityman, who has owned Pedro in the past, was hitless on the day), but tensions continued into the bottom half of the inning when Clemens took the mound. Both benches had been warned by the umpires about retaliation. But the Rocket, with his own colorful past when it comes to headhunting (see Piazza, Mike), engaged in another kind of head game. On the first three pitches, as Baseball Tonight‘s Harold Reynolds pointed out later, Ramirez was so psyched out by the merest threat of a high hard one that he was bailing out each time.

Clemens’ fourth pitch to Ramirez, a high fastball nowhere near anybody’s head, enraged Little Man Ramirez so much that the moody slugger charged the mound, bat in hand, exchanging four-letter pleasantries with Clemens. In postgame interviews, Clemens emphasized that his pitch was over the plate: “”If I wanted it near him,” Clemens said in his characteristically Texan drawl, “he’d know it.”

Both benches emptied, and then the game’s most surreal moment transpired. Feisty Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer — a man who knows a few things about beanballs — charged at Martinez and appeared to lunge at him. Pedro showed his true color — yellow — by throwing the 72-year-old to the ground, an image that will dog Puny Pedro for the rest of his career. Not that Zimmer was in the right, or that the entire region of New England hasn’t wanted to do just that to “Popeye” since the Sox collapse in 1978, but this was ridiculous, and miles removed from the Clemens-Piazza feud of 2000. Then you had two men in what would have been a fair fight; here you had a senior citizen and a junior punk — pure tabloid dynamite.

Even more ridiculous was that nobody was ejected after this melee. Martinez, Ramirez, and Zimmer should have all taken powders at this point, but crew chief Tim McClelland decided to separate the game from the sideshow, concluding that all parties should stay. This kept the atmosphere at a rolling boil, a situation that would carry ramifications later.

For his part, when the action resumed, Clemens showed amazing restraint. He threw one more pitch to Ramirez, waaaay outside, and Mental Midget Manny swung feebly before taking his seat. From there, the ballgame settled into a tense groove. Surprisingly, Martinez found his rhythm and a few miles an hour on his fastball, and retired the Yanks 1-2-3 in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings. Clemens got into trouble in the sixth via a Johnny Damon single and a Walker walk with none out. But he K’ed Nomar on three pitches, and facing Manny again, got the Sox slugger to ground into an inning-ending double play.

Clemens pounded his glove as he came off the Fenway field for what would be the last time, frustrating the Sox faithful who’d shouted, “Get Roger!” The mental image it conjured up was of Bugs Bunny jamming a carrot in Elmer Fudd’s rifle as the fwustwated hunter swore he’d get that waskally wabbit. The poise which the Rocket showed in front of that loaded crowd spoke volumes; as the New York Times‘ Jack Curry put it, “His final appearance at Fenway was crazy, but Clemens was the better pitcher, the better man.”

That said, there was still the small matter of winning the ballgame, which was the Yanks’ main interest. Torre brought on Felix Heredia to start the seventh, but when Heredia walked David Ortiz, he got the hook in favor of Jose Conteras. The Cuban gave up a single to Kevin Millar, and then yielded a run when Trot Nixon grounded into a double play, cutting the lead to 4-3. Bill Mueller then drew a walk from Contreras, but Jason Varitek popped up to end the inning.

In the eighth, Torre went to his ace in the hole, Mariano Rivera. For the Yanks, the atmosphere felt like a clinching opportunity; a loss after what had transpired would have been devastating, as if somehow justifying the Sox shenanigans. Fortunately Rivera was as cool a customer as Clemens, and the Yankee closer Mo’ed ‘em down 1-2-3 in both innings to preserve the win.

But not before one more sideshow took place. At the beginning of the 9th, a scuffle ensued in the Yankee bullpen. According to reports, an overly partisan Boston groundskeeper got into a mixer with reliever Jeff Nelson and rightfielder Garcia, who climbed the wall to come to his teammate’s aid. The groundskeeper ended up being taken to the hospital with “cleat marks on his arms and back,” according to the Times, while Garcia left the game with a cut on his knuckle. Executives for both teams blew hard, while the Boston Police Department launched an investigation into why Sox fans are so wicked retarded… oops, I mean, into the fight which occurred.

The postgame interviews contained some great soundbites and quotes:

• Boston manager Grady Little: “”Everyone knew it was going to be quite a battle, it was going to be very emotional, a lot of intensity. But I think we’ve upgraded it from a battle to a war.”

• Joe Torre: “There’s no question in my mind that Pedro hit him on purpose. He was probably frustrated with the fact that we hit some balls hard… I didn’t care for that.”

• Pedro Martinez: “I’m not going to talk about any of that. What are you doing in my locker?”

• Trot Nixon: “A whole lot of testosterone flying around out there.”

• Derek Jeter: “All I saw was the bald head go down. I wasn’t sure if it was Zimm or Boomer [David Wells]. Hey, Zimm is intense. That’s the only way you can stay in this game all these years.”

• Scott Sauerbeck: “That guy [Zimmer] has a pair on him. Was what he did idiotic? Yes. Could he have hurt Petey? No.”

• Roger Clemens: “Sometimes when you’re getting knocked around the ballpark, you get your ticket punched… These guys have done it to me, and if you don’t have electric stuff or you’re not on, and guys are leaning out hitting balls they shouldn’t be hitting, you might have to stand somebody up. But just ’cause you’re getting hit around you don’t whip one behind somebody’s neck… I wasn’t a part of all that. I went in there and was trying to strike Manny out, and the bottom line is that he started mouthing me and the ball wasn’t even near him. And he would know if if I’m in it. There would be no mistake about it.”

• Clemens, again, “Pick your two most favorite superheroes and I’ll put Rivera up against both of them.”

Online, a couple of Boston bloggers felt shamed the day’s events. Ed Kubosiak from Out of Left Field wrtes: “I’m embarrassed to be a Red Sox fan this morning. Hell, make that embarrassed to be a baseball fan. I found it nearly impossible to cheer for the Sox yesterday after Pedro’s head-hunting pitch that hit Karim Garcia in the back, and his finger pointing, both at the Yankee dugout and at his own head, seeming to indicate he would throw at somebody else’s noggin if he had to.”

Similarly, Edward Cossette of Bambino’s Curse writes, “I went to bed last night feeling embarrassed to be a Red Sox fan. I awoke this morning and felt no different.” Cossette runs down some of the Boston media coverage, noting Boston Herald writer Tony Massarotti‘s observation, “Interestingly, following the game, not a single Red Sox player defended Martinez’ pitch to Garcia. Not one.”

With the dust on an ugly day now at least somewhat settled, the Yanks hold a 2-1 edge to the series and send David Wells to the mound to face John Burkett. Wells pitched the Yanks to their biggest victory of the regular season over the Sox in the Bronx, and he also beat Boston once in its home park. Burkett has a history of futility against the Yanks: 0-6, 8.49 ERA in the regular season, though he did beat them for a complete game victory in the ’96 ALDS for the Texas Rangers, and he shut them out for 5.2 innings back in July. The advantage would appear to be with the Pinstripes here, as they have a chance to go for the jugular in this bloodthirsty series.

Whatever sympathy the Sox and their 85-year championship drought may have evoked nationwide probably evaporated in yesterday’s melees. As Washington Post‘s Thomas Boswell put it, “If ‘Reverse the Curse’ were on a nationwide recall ballot after Saturday’s Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, then the Red Sox would probably lose millions of ‘swing votes’ after a disgraceful performance that left the Boston organization with a self-inflicted black eye in addition to a 4-3 loss.”

Saturday’s ballgame may turn out to be the defining moment of this Yankee team, the one which turned their desire for a pennant into a steely resolve to crush their Boston rivals into a gooey paste. If so, the city of Boston is going to wish Pedro and Manny had just taken their licking instead of putting the “ass” in “class.”