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Mets trying to move on

With the fallout from the Clemens-Piazza drama in Game 2 still buzzing, MLB reviews the incident.

[AP photo] Home plate umpire Charlie Reliford, center, separates Met Mike Piazza, right, and Yankee Roger Clemens after Clemens threw a part of Piazza's bat in his direction.

By MARC TOPKIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 24, 2000

NEW YORK -- The day after Roger Clemens threw a bat at Mets star Mike Piazza, and the day before Shea Stadium fans throw who knows what at Clemens' Yankees, there was an attempt to return some normalcy to the World Series.

Major League Baseball officials said Monday they are reviewing the bizarre incident from the first inning of Sunday's game, with the possibility Clemens could be suspended from further action or fined.

MLB executive vice president Sandy Alderson said interviews were being conducted Monday to determine "whether or not in the judgment of (discipline chief) Frank Robinson some action should be taken, notwithstanding the lack of action taken by the umpires at the time based on the information they had." A ruling likely will come today.

Piazza said after thinking about what happened, he thought MLB should look into it. Clemens said he didn't watch a replay of what happened and wasn't concerned about any potential disciplinary action.

With the Mets in the perilous position of having lost the first two games, several players said, in essence, that they have more important things to worry about right now.

"This team needs to try and get away from all the talk and the controversy going on with the Clemens deal and focus on winning," outfielder Darryl Hamilton said.

That alone will be a tough task. Not only do the Yankees have the confidence and momentum from back-to-back one-run victories, they have Orlando Hernandez, who is unbeaten in nine post-season starts, on the mound for Game 3 tonight.

"I think it goes without saying, it's a must-win," Piazza said. "We can't afford to go down 3-0. We've been down 3-0, obviously, to the Braves (last year), and we almost came back and evened the series, but that's extremely difficult to do."

Equally challenging will be getting past the hype and hyperbole of the Piazza-Clemens incident, which dominated the New York airwaves and newspapers. (ROGER GOES BATTY, the Daily News exclaimed.)

The Mets, or at least some of them, were particularly annoyed at suggestions they should have responded more aggressively to Clemens' action. Especially galling was a headline on Wallace Matthews' back-page column in the New York Post: "MEEK THE METS -- Piazza, teammates wimp out."

"What were we supposed to do? Go out there and tag-team him?" catcher Todd Pratt said. "To hear we were intimidated, to hear we have no heart, have you watched us all year?"

Piazza took a few steps toward Clemens and asked what his problem was and was satisfied when Clemens didn't respond that the incident was over.

"I can assure you if there was any sort of aggressiveness, if he would have said anything else to me at that point, it could have been a different situation," Piazza said.

Other Mets said they would have handled things differently. "It was a challenge to me," pitcher Mike Hampton said. "Different people react differently. If someone throws a bat at me, I'm going to fight."

The core issue seems to be whether Clemens threw the barrel of the splintered bat at Piazza, as some of the Mets believe, or whether he was merely tossing it toward the dugout, as the Yankees maintain. (The secondary controversy is whether Clemens should have been ejected for what he did.)

Clemens on Monday repeated his original explanation, that he initially thought it was the ball coming at him, and that when he realized it was a piece of the bat he wanted to "fling it" off the field.

Mets manager Bobby Valentine, who claimed to not see the incident when it happened and thus didn't object too vociferously when Clemens wasn't ejected, reviewed the tape on Monday.

"I saw that the bat bounced twice, that he made a pretty good fielding play and he came up throwing," Valentine said wryly. "He was in a mechanically sound throwing position as I stopped the video. He stepped toward where Mike was going."

Yankees manager Joe Torre was emotional and angry in his defense of Clemens on Sunday night, objecting so strongly to a question about Clemens trying to hurt Piazza that he briefly left the interview session. Monday, Torre continued to back his pitcher, to a degree.

"I don't condone what he did," Torre said. "But, again, I still hold to the fact that he didn't throw at him, okay?"

It's unlikely the Shea Stadium fans will agree when Clemens is introduced tonight, prompting Torre to wonder aloud about security and raising the question if the Yankees even will allow Clemens to go on the field.

What kind of reaction will there be?

"That's a dumb question," Pratt said. "What do you think?"

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Gary Shelton