Tonight is the night for Red Sox fans to teach David Price a lesson about the consequences of his actions, since his manager won’t.

If Sox fans are who they say they are and are as bothered by Price’s gutless ambush of Dennis Eckersley on the team plane a month ago as they seem to be, tonight is the night to let Price know there is more than home-field advantage at Fenway Park. If you don’t know how to act, there’s also home-field disadvantage.

Tonight is the night to treat Price like Darryl Strawberry once was. How Jose Canseco once was. How a long-ago shortstop of the Sox named Don Buddin, whose hands seemed to be made out of concrete whenever games got close, was. Tonight is the night to boo David Price off the pitcher’s mound.

A year ago, I thought Price pitched better than he got credit for, although when you’re being paid $31 million one can understand why some felt paying nearly $2 million per victory was a little steep. But how he’s pitched — or not pitched — isn’t the issue any more. The issue is how he acts, and how the team that employs him has too. Or hasn’t.

It is one thing for an athlete to have a confrontation with a sportswriter. Other than the writer and the player, nobody cares unless the cops get involved. But Dennis Eckersley is a Hall of Fame pitcher, someone who has done what Price has never done, which is pitch like a champion in the playoffs.

You all know by now how Price ambushed Eck last month on the team plane, verbally assaulting him as a number of his weak-kneed teammates applauded. Then Price went back to his seat, I was told, and put on a pair of sunglasses as if he was The Terminator. It was midnight.

Guys who wear sunglasses at midnight are either beaten fighters or morons. Price has never been in a fight in his life, so there you go.

Later he cursed out Eckersley a second time on the plane and again neither his teammates nor what passes for management did a thing. That includes manager John Farrell, who deserves your animus as well.

It has often been said that Farrell looks like John Wayne. Now we know he has more in common with Wayne than a wide chin. Wayne was a phony sheriff and a phony soldier. He just played them in the movies. Farrell is doing the same as Red Sox manager. Acting.

Reportedly, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski apologized to Eckersley in Toronto while Farrell went out of his way to say he had not. He called their relationship “professional.” Well, one guy is, so he’s half right about that, which is better than he’s batting with in-game decisions lately.

Yet the truth is, the only apology should have come from the thumb-sucking bully willing to take on any sportswriter or 62-year-old Hall of Famer as long as 24 teammates are around but not man-to-man. Kind of the same approach he takes to the loneliness of postseason pitching.

Had Farrell thought for a minute WWJWD — as in What Would John Wayne Do — he would have stood up and told Price to sit down and shut up. At least it’s what he would have done in the movies.

But this was reality, and you saw what you got. According to all accounts, a number of Price’s teammates applauded his schoolyard stunt. Worse, no one intervened either time. No one said a word when Price claimed Eckersley didn’t understand the difficulty of life in the big leagues, which would make Price uninformed as well as ill-advised.

If there is anyone who has experienced nearly all the difficulties of big league life, it is Eck, a recovering alcoholic who was flat on his back several times but battled back to end up in Cooperstown. The only way Price gets in there is to buy a ticket.

But Price was right about one thing. Eck doesn’t understand how difficult it is to keep choking in the playoffs the way Price has. In fact, Eckersley gave up one of the most painful home runs in World Series history yet came back to register 15 postseason saves. He never managed to do what Price did a year ago in the playoffs, which was post a 13.00 ERA. Eck’s career postseason ERA, mostly as a closer, is 3.00. David Price’s? Nearly double that.

Eckersley is now a sometimes analyst for NESN, and fans greatly appreciate that he tells it as it is. When it’s good, he says so. When it’s not, he says that too, and it seems the latter is too much for this collection of diaper-wearing Red Sox. With the only adult in the room, David Ortiz, gone, Sox insiders claim Price now rules. If that’s true, be glad football season has begun because these guys will crack under pressure like an overripe melon, just as they did in embarrassing fashion last year against Cleveland.

Yesterday, a worried Sox management saw the need for damage control. Club president Sam Kennedy told WEEI, “Dennis Eckersley was owed an apology, clearly.” He said he apologized by phone the next morning but was unsure if Price had (he has not, and management knows it). He also said, “David Price is a fantastic teammate. He’s got their backs. He’s doing everything he can to compete at a high level. But we all make mistakes.”

Yes, and the first is not apologizing when you act like a spoiled brat and an entitled jerk. Sam left that part out.

It was disappointing to some to learn Dustin Pedroia was cuddling with Price on a clubhouse couch a day after the story became public, laughingly pointing out it was being talked about on national television. That’s how kids react after they step in it. They make themselves look worse because they don’t have sense enough to be embarrassed after making fools of themselves. They don’t know when they’ve gone too far. Apparently, neither does their manager.

So now it’s up to the final arbiters in such circumstances to speak. Now it’s up to you, the fans, to tell David Price tonight that he’s being paid $31 million to play baseball at Fenway Park, not the Yawkey Way Middle School.

It’s up to you to be the only adults in his life. Let him have it every inning he’s out there, strikeouts or flameout. Let him know, in Boston we know a phony when we see one.