A-Rod's pinstripe swipe gives surreal feel to Game 6

Miller: ALCS back where it belongs -- Game 7

NEW YORK -- You may bat at the baseball while at the plate with a bat in your hands.

Alex Rodriguez reaches out to slap the ball away from Bronson Arroyo in the eighth.(Getty Images)

You may not bat at the ball while you are running the bases and the ball is in the pitcher's hands.

Got it?

If he really, truly didn't get it before, Alex Rodriguez does now. Oh boy, does he ever.

What might become the defining moment of this American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox occurred in the eighth inning of Game 6 Tuesday. Boston led 4-2, one out, one on and the tying run at the plate in A-Rod.

It resulted in the second umpires' summit of the evening, the second reversed call of the evening in Boston's favor, a livid Yankees manager Joe Torre, a shower of beer bottles and baseballs from an even more livid 56,128 people filling Yankee Stadium and, finally, a call to the riot police by Kevin Hallinan, baseball's director of security.

Riot police were summoned after the Game 6 scene turned ugly.(Getty Images)

The Yankees finished batting in the eighth with the riot police -- in full battle gear, including helmets -- on guard up against the fence to the outfield side of each dugout.

"It was a little roller," Boston first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said of the play. "You're taught as a first baseman to go get the ball. Bronson (Arroyo, the Boston pitcher at the time) made a good play."

Indeed, Arroyo sprung off the mound with cat-like quickness, scooped up the ball and continued toward the first-base line to tag Rodriguez -- not too far up the line from where Roger Clemens heaved the jagged, broken bat in the direction of Mike Piazza in the 2000 World Series.

Mientkiewicz was several feet up the line as well.

"Alex kind of slapped the ball out of his hand," Mientkiewicz said, and his version of events was confirmed by multiple television replays -- which were definitive enough you could certainly eliminate the words "kind of."

Rodriguez reached out with his left hand and definitely slapped at the ball, connecting with Arroyo's left forearm and knocking the ball loose.