The night started out with Stephen King on the NESN pre-game show and just got weirder from there. We had a benches clearing brawl, a fight between two Boston Red Sox players and in between all that there was a baseball game being played as the Red Sox beat the Rays 7-1 for their 13th straight win at Fenway Park and their 6th straight win over the Rays.

The Red Sox had come into this game trailing the Rays by a 1½ games and now the Rays trail by 1½ games in the American League East.

Jon Lester bounced back from his two previous outings scattering 8 hits and 1 run over 6 1/3 innings. The key stat of the night for Lester was that he did not walk anyone. He had good command of his pitches and moved the ball around the plate well for his 4th win of the season.

Mike Timlin worked 1 2/3 innings walking 2 and striking out while David Aardsma worked the 9th giving up a walk while striking out 2.

Offensively the Red Sox were led by Manny Ramirez who went 2-for-3 with a home run and 5 RBIs before leaving the game in the 8th for a pinch-runner after tweaking his hamstring during an at-bat where he ended up walking.  Sean Casey and Chris Carter added two hits for the Sox. Carter had come in for Coco Crisp and singled in his first two at-bats. For his troubles, he was sent back down to Pawtucket after the game.

He was sent down because Jacoby Ellsbury rolled his wrist diving for a ball in the top of the 3rd and had to leave the game. X-rays were negative and he is listed day-to-day with a strained right wrist. Brandon Moss was taken out of the PawSox game in Charlotte tonight and will be on the Red Sox bench tomorrow night.

Rays starter James Shields had a short night as he was ejected when he hit Coco with the pitch. But before that, he was touched up for 3 runs in the bottom of the 1st inning.

After he struck out Ellsbury, he hit Dustin Pedroia with a pitch. Whether he did that on purpose or not is open for interpretation. J.D. Drew followed that up with a double to deep left and then Manny crushed a changeup from Shields over the Green Monster to put the Red Sox on top 3-0.

With two outs in the top of the 2nd, Willy Aybar hit a double off Lester and came around to score on a Jonny Gomes single to cut the Sox lead to 3-1.  After a Justin Ruggiano single, Akinori Iwamura flew out to end the inning.

Coco led off the 2nd and after Shields’ first pitch was a ball, he hit Coco in the leg with a pitch. Coco took one step towards first and then headed out to mound to take on Shields. Rather than rehash it here, you can check out the video here. When all was said and done with the fracas, Crisp, Shields and Gomes were all ejected from the game.

Carter had come in as a pinch-runner for Crisp and went to second on a walk to Lugo by new Rays pitcher Grant Balfour. Ellsbury grounded out to first moving Carter and Lugo up 90 feet. Pedroia brought in the 4th run of the game as his sacrifice fly easily scored Carter from third.

Balfour was back on the mound in the 4th and with 1-out Carter and Lugo had back-to-back singles.  J.P. Howell came in for Balfour and got Kevin Youkilis to fly out as Carter went to third. With Pedroia at the plate, Lugo stole 2nd with no throw and then Pedroia ended up walking to load up the bases full of Red Sox. Howell then walked Drew to force in a run to make it 5-1. Manny followed that up with a single plating to more Sox for a 7-1 lead.

Between the 4th and 5th inning, Manny and Youk had some sort of disagreement and had to be separated.

Things were pretty quiet after that with the exception of a few hit-by-pitches. Lester hit both Carl Crawford and Iwamura while Al Reyes hit Youkilis.

Bartolo Colon takes the ball for the Red Sox tomorrow as they look to keep up their winning ways against the free-falling Seattle Mariners. Hopefully tomorrow night’s game isn’t as weird as tonight’s was.

Notes and musings:

Rays @ Red Sox 6/5/08 boxscore

Former Celtics great and NBA Hall of Famer John Havlicek threw out tonight’s ceremonial 1st pitch.