Word spread quickly – and emotionally – yesterday when the commissioner’s office announced that Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett would be suspended for six games for throwing at the Angels’ Bobby Abreu’s head.And that’s to be expected. The Red Sox are off to a bad start, panic is starting to set in (especially at this address, where it’s never too early to panic), and having your best pitcher gassed for one start isn’t going to bring people in off the ledge.The Item put an update onto its Itemlive website when the announcement came down.Now, it just so happens that “Daily Item” is an actual name on Facebook (plug ? plug ? everybody sign on to Facebook and befriend “Daily Item”). Our web updates automatically go up on Facebook, which means that if you’re one of “Daily Item’s” 1,207 (as of last night) friends, you saw it and had the opportunity to comment.And comments abounded. There were 14 of them – about as many as any sports story we’ve handled has ever garnered (with the exception of the Buzzy Barton-Mayor Clancy Wars, which always seem to draw fierce reactions).Of course, go to either one of the Boston papers’ sites, and you’d find something similar. This was apparently a hot-button issue – way more of a problem with people than the actual incident, which occurred Sunday.To refresh, Beckett was trying to hold Angels runner Chone Figgins on base while dealing with Abreu, who always seems to kill the Red Sox no matter what uniform he’s wearing. Instead of throwing to second endlessly, Beckett held the ball and stared at Figgins while Abreu fidgeted in the batter’s box.Finally, just as Beckett had committed to throwing to the plate, Abreu asked for, and was granted, time so he could step out and refocus. Pitchers generally don’t like this, because stopping short could cause an injury. So usually, they let fly ? making sure they heave the ball to Jupiter to avoid hitting the batter. Jon Lester has hit the backstop without a bounce in these cases.But Beckett let loose at Abreu’s head. Or close enough to it that Abreu got genuinely agitated.As broadcaster Jerry Remy said Sunday, you couldn’t blame Abreu for getting hot. Beckett, who could – with some justification – be called the Nuke LaLoosh of Major League Baseball, threw gasoline on the fire by getting huffy with Abreu, and that’s when the benches emptied.It was your typical baseball skirmish (meaning a lot of milling around and no fighting), but it all could have been avoided if Beckett had just told Abreu, “Sorry, it slipped.”It was an emotional weekend for the Angels anyway. One of their pitchers got killed in an auto accident last week, and they were clearly on edge. The game of baseball does not move so fast that Beckett couldn’t have taken that into consideration once the Angels started getting steamed up.I wonder whether the six-game suspension has more to do with the incident itself, or with Beckett’s total lack of class afterward. And I also wonder whether Dean of Discipline Bob Watson has just decided that baseballs flying at heads for any reason are just unacceptable and must be dealt with harshly.If that’s the case, good for Watson.My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that Beckett was annoyed because Abreu stood and watched him stare at Figgins for what must have seemed like a day and a half before calling time just as he got ready to release the ball. That wasn’t a coincidence. That’s gamesmanship.I also think that it’s possible Beckett took advantage of the occasion to aim the ball at Abreu (perhaps not meaning for it to sail over his head, but to get just close enough to him to send a message of his own).And if that’s the case (and I’m betting it is), then, well, do the crime, do the time. I’m with Watson. Let’s leave the head out of the equation.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.