John Harper Chamberlain raises tempers, Chien-Ming settles score Friday, August 31st 2007, 4:00 AM On a day when Chien-Ming Wang put the Red Sox to sleep for this series, dominating them in his unglamorous way, Joba Chamberlain managed to awaken the enemy with a couple of Wild Thing fastballs over the head of Kevin Youkilis. It remains to be seen which proves more significant, but there's no doubt about which stirred more emotion yesterday. Already you get the feeling that Chamberlain is going to have a way of always making headlines, from his 98-mph fastballs to his animated fist pumps that follow a big strikeout. It's crazy for the Red Sox to think he was throwing some sort of purpose pitches toward Youkilis, just as it was silly for home plate umpire Angel Hernandez to eject him yesterday, but when you throw that hard and you've already made a big rookie splash for the Yankees, perception is often fueled by emotion. The Yankees surely weren't going to try to rile the Sox in the ninth inning as they were sweeping them out of town with yesterday's 5-0 victory. And Chamberlain's body language on the mound may suggest a bit of swagger, but does anyone really think that a kid who has been in the big leagues for a month is going to take it upon himself to deliver some sort of payback for Alex Rodriguez getting plunked on Tuesday night? Ah, but when a team is getting whipped by its big-brother rival, in this case a Red Sox team trying to erase the memories of last year's late-season collapse, it will look for anything as a rallying cry. To be fair, Youkilis had a right to be upset. It has to be scary to have a couple of 98-mph fastballs sail over your head, so it wasn't terribly surprising the Sox were screaming at Chamberlain from the dugout, and later using his wildness as a reason not to focus on how thoroughly Yankee pitching throttled them in this series. Does any of it matter? Maybe we'll find out when these teams meet again in Boston in a couple of weeks. For the moment, however, if we can get past all the Joba hysteria, it was the quiet man from Taiwan who left the most lasting impression yesterday. For the second time this season Wang flirted with a no-hitter, throwing six-plus hitless innings before surrendering a hard single to right to Mike Lowell. It was just as well, from the Yankees' point of view. Partly because of four walks, Wang's pitch count was so high that the Yankees found themselves rooting against a no-hitter as they had a night earlier with Roger Clemens. Indeed, Wang wound up coming out after seven innings because he had thrown 103 pitches. "You have to give him a shot but you worry more about him than a no-hitter," said pitching coach Ron Guidry. "He's been doing a lot of pitching this season and he's a guy we're going to count on the rest of the way." That was Guidry's way of saying that Wang has reestablished himself at least as the Yankees' co-ace, along with Andy Pettitte. In raising his record to 16-6, Wang delivered a second straight dominant performance that indicated he has fought his way past something of a confidence crisis that arose after he was bombed by the Blue Jays in a start three weeks ago. "That Toronto game messed him up in his mind," Guidry said. "He had never been hit around like he was in that game, and it affected him. He had another bad start, and he wasn't being aggressive. "We worked on some things. He quickened his delivery a little, created more momentum going toward the plate and started being aggressive again. He's throwing his sinker harder than normal now, and it's not moving quite as much but he's controlling it better." Wang was consistently around 95 mph on the radar gun, but it's more than that. He has begun to incorporate his off-speed stuff, a slider and a changeup, to keep hitters off-balance, and the results were rather dramatic yesterday. The Red Sox have hit Wang well in the past, and David Ortiz has been a nightmare - 12-for-24 with two home runs going into yesterday. On this day, however, Big Papi went 0-for-3, striking out swinging twice and grounding out to second, as he was fooled by off-speed stuff. "The way he pitched to Papi was really impressive," said Torre. "He's really changed the look of the way he pitches." As usual, Wang didn't say much. "He's a very, very modest kid," said Guidry. "But he knows what he has to do. You've gotta pitch your best game to beat those guys the way he did." It punctuated probably the best pitching series the Yankees have had all season. They may not catch the Red Sox, but they surely gave them something to think about should they meet in October. Something more than those two fastballs to the backstop. [email protected] http://tinyurl.com/yq86v6 --

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