Joe Buck says he was just saying hello.

Buck, working Saturday’s Yankees-Red Sox game for FOX, admits he and Alex Rodriguez exchanged greetings during batting practice, but that he didn’t distract the Yankees third baseman, causing him to take a hard line drive off the shin.

Buck told USA Today that Rodriguez “looks out of the corner of his eye, says ‘Hey, Joe.’ I kept walking, put my arm up to acknowledge it, but kept walking. Didn’t even say hi. … For him it was a ‘Hey,’ a turn of the head, literally half a second. And I didn’t initiate it.”

Rodriguez was scratched from the lineup Saturday but played Sunday and Monday.

“It was literally the most freak thing you could put together,” Buck said. “Like getting hit by a pebble thrown off a skyscraper.”