NEW YORK – Joba Chamberlain did it on purpose. Two nuclear-powered fastballs, back-to-back, raging over the bald head belonging to Kevin Youkilis were indeed thrown with vile intentions. After a review of the evidence, that was the best available guess on the board. Don't bet your mortgage on it, just a monthly payment. The first one, clocked at 98 mph, sounded like this: See you at Fenway in two weeks. The second one, clocked at 99 mph, sounded like this: See you in the ALCS after that. Chamberlain stood at his locker Thursday, put his pitching hand over his heart, and swore he had too much respect for Youkilis, too much respect for the Red Sox, too much respect for baseball, too much respect for all the Rockwellian virtues associated with the game to ever desecrate a 5-0 Yankees victory with an unnecessary pair of heat-seeking missiles in the ninth. The kid looked and sounded sincere, but pitchers know how to lie in these situations better than they know how to ice their arms. Especially pitchers lockered next to Roger Clemens. "Absolutely ridiculous," Joe Torre called the ejection of Chamberlain by home plate umpire Angel Hernandez. "We weren't throwing at you," the manager said to Youkilis as he walked onto the field to argue the call. No, Boston's first baseman wasn't buying what Torre was selling. "I didn't see any other balls going that far out of the strike zone," Youkilis said. "It doesn't look good ... when two balls go at your head and a guy has a zero ERA." When Hernandez signaled for him to depart the mound and end the first ninth-inning appearance of his brief but otherwise spectacular big league life, Chamberlain appeared stunned. He looked like the sixth-grader who had just hit his teacher in the back with a paper airplane, only to act shocked when the teacher fingered him as the prime suspect. "He's just trying to throw a ball through a wall," Torre maintained. Or he's just trying to pour gasoline on the fire engulfing the angriest rivalry in sports. Too bad, for this was booked as a special occasion for Chamberlain. Yielding to popular demand, the Yankees had decided to modify the Joba Rules, to loosen the reins on their wildly talented colt. Torre had his 21-year-old reliever pitch the eighth and then go out for the ninth – the first time Chamberlain started a second inning after only one day of rest. No, it didn't seem like the right time to extend the golden boy's golden arm. The Yankees scored three times in the eighth, all but completing the series sweep. Perfect opportunity to save Chamberlain for a tougher two-inning proposition to be named later. But like the fans, Torre's been seduced by the kid's charms. He didn't finally get that green light on Joba just to make it turn red. Chamberlain had pitched a scoreless eighth, but failed to record a strikeout in an inning for the first time. He got David Ortiz to fly out to start the ninth, and then the first baseman stepped into the box. Youkilis had been involved in a heated argument in the seventh, when he avoided Alex Rodriguez's tag on a dash to third before the umpires reversed field and ruled him out of the basepath. Terry Francona got ejected, and Youkilis did a whole lot of stomping around. Did that dust-up somehow boil the Yankees' blood? Were there lingering issues from the suspensions Torre and Scott Proctor received when the former Yankee reliever plunked Youkilis in June? Had Joba just watched one too many replays of Pedro body-slamming Zimmer? "If that young man is trying to get our attention," Francona said, "he did a very good job." Joba wouldn't relent. "I'm new to this thing," he said. "There was no maliciousness behind it. ... I want to send a message but I didn't want to send one that way." The fans chanted his name on exit. Chien-Ming Wang had pitched six hitless innings, had outdueled Curt Schilling through seven, and yet only thunderous cheers were heard when Torre replaced him with Joba. Chamberlain had never been ejected from a game, not even in Little League. But despite Torre's claim that umpires need to take a few Internet courses in common sense, Hernandez got it right when he rained on Joba's parade. "There is more than a little bit of history between these two clubs," said Derryl Cousins, the crew chief. "Those were two pretty nasty pitches the young man threw. Up here, you need to be a little better throwing strikes and we just had to put a lid on it before there was a problem." Chamberlain said his offending pitches "slipped," but the films don't lie. "The pitches were really identical if you look at the replay," Youkilis said. Yes they were. Odds are, Chamberlain was trying to prove something to the Red Sox, his teammates and himself, and chose a most dangerous method of attack. "That's not who I am," he swore. Pitchers who throw at batters never admit intent, for obvious reasons. The best available guess says Chamberlain wanted to scare the spit out of the Red Sox for future consideration. Joba just got the rivalry moving at 100 mph. In Fenway and beyond, the kid had better be up to speed. http://tinyurl.com/3xxxzp --

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