For Dempster, hindsight may prove to be 20/20

I will admit that in the heat of the moment, I cheered.

It was a snapshot reaction to what felt like a long overdue moment for the game of baseball. Ryan Dempster intentionally hit Alex Rodriguez in the second inning of last night's contest and Fenway Park ate it up. Dempster, a well-respected and liked player across the league, sent a message to the most narcissistic and tainted player in the game in Rodriguez.

Dempster essentially said to Rodriguez he wouldn't tolerate his actions any longer, let alone share the field with the embattled third basemen facing a 211-game suspension.

This situation was a ticking time bomb, a boiling point which finally exploded in the most heated rivalry in baseball. If there was a time and place for such theatrics, it is Red Sox/Yankees.

However, in hindsight, Dempster will most likely wish he hadn't picked the rubber game of a contentious three-game series as that exact time and place. Unfortunately, there are no mulligans in baseball.

The timing was surprising, even in the moment. Dempster took the mound after Boston's offense signed sealed and delivered a two-run lead to the innings-eater just a half inning before. He chose Rodriguez's first at-bat which coincided with the start of the inning. Dempster also needed four pitches to hit Rodriguez, after running a fastball behind A-Rod to start the at-bat and leaving the two next fastballs inside as well.

By the fourth pitch everyone, including Joe Girardi, knew the intent. Despite only a single player (Brett Gardner) coming off the bench and Girardi's promise of "someones gonna get hit (never happpened)," the Yankees manager's instant ejection served as the first public defense of Rodriguez by the New York Yankees, a telling moment throughout this entire debacle.

Dempster threw gasoline on a simmering fire last night. Ironically, it was one of the few Dempster throws which hit it's intended target, as he struggled immediately following the Rodriguez beaning. When you make such a bold statement like he did, you have to be able to back it up. Dempster certainly did not.

Not only did he relinquish the lead in that very same inning. Instead, Dempster relinquished seven runs on the night, departing in the sixth inning after loading the bases after already allowing a magnificently dramatic homer to Rodriguez himself in the very same inning.

Instead of hitting Rodriguez, Dempster would have been better served to continue pitching with the lead in hopes of recording an out in the 7th inning, something he's done only twice since June 14th. The man with a 6.25 ERA since the beginning of July needed a strong outing against the Yankees, needed to put his team in position to get back on track and take a pivotal series against a division rival.

The Red Sox, 3-7 in their last ten games, surely could've used a hard-fought win at Fenway before jettisoning off to the west coast to stat a difficult road trip. Instead, Dempster tried to play the role of baseball's moral police officer, in the process awaking a sleeping giant. Rodriguez's 3-for-4 performance including a WWE-style villain heel turn complete with a homer was nothing short of fantastic, the perfect response to what happened in the 2nd inning.

We despise Rodriguez because he cheated, lied and  put himself above the game and his teammates.

So why should we celebrate a pitcher for selfishly hitting him too?