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Mariners vs. Yankees |
Mets vs. Cardinals
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Saturday, October 14
Eye for an eye: Piniella promises retaliation
By Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com
SEATTLE -- Alex Rodriguez said he didn't want to take away from the pitching performance of Roger Clemens Saturday night, but it was hard not to.
Though Clemens tied an LCS record with 15 strikeouts in his one-hit shutout, the questions after the game centered on a brewing rivalry between Clemens, one of the game's older, more established stars, and Rodriguez, baseball's golden future.
|  | | Alex Rodriguez glares at Roger Clemens after getting knocked down twice in the first inning. |
In the first inning, after easily striking out Seattle's first two hitters, Clemens buzzed a fastball inches away from Rodriguez's chin. The crowd angrily booed. Seconds later, Clemens' next pitch zipped just as close to Rodriguez's face. As the boos grew louder, Rodriguez began to scowl.
After the game, with a throng of reporters shoving cameras and boom mikes and spotlights in his face, Rodriguez refused to comment, saying, "I have nothing to say about Roger Clemens."
But then, a question about anger tipped A-Rod off.
"He always hides from the fact that he's throwing up there," Rodriguez started, "but you never see him miss up and away. It's always up and in."
He wasn't done.
"I don't want to take away from his night, because he pitched a great game, but that other stuff I'm pissed off about. I don't have to worry about (what I'm saying) because I'm never going to be his teammate."
Just down the hall in the Safeco Field basement, Mariners manager Lou Piniella was even more agitated with Clemens. It was Piniella who ordered Seattle starter Paul Abbott to throw high and tight to Yankees catcher Jorge Posada the next inning.
"If he wants his hitters to get thrown at, that's fine with me," Piniella said of Clemens. "That's exactly what will happen. That's exactly what happened tonight and that will be exactly what happens the next time he faces our ballclub.
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I don't want to take away from (Clemens') night, because he pitched a great game, but that other stuff I'm pissed off about. I don't have to worry about (what I'm saying) because I'm never going to be his teammate. ” |
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— Alex Rodriguez |
"If he wants to throw at our guys, we'll throw at his guys -- period."
After Abbott threw at Posada, the television cameras showed an angry Piniella yelling towards the Yankee dugout. After the game, Piniella hardly hid from his in-game tirade.
"(The Yankees) were looking at our dugout like we did something wrong, and I was just trying to let them know that we're going to protect our hitters. It wasn't directed at anybody (in particular), just at their ballclub."
The situation tensed again in the seventh inning, after Seattle's Al Martin broke up the Clemens no-hit bid with a double down the right-field line. With Martin at second, the still-irritated Rodriguez came to the plate, looking to knock Martin home.
The count was 1-2 and Clemens was beginning the motion for his fourth pitch when Rodriguez stepped out of the batter's box. On the television replay, Clemens mouthed something towards home plate and Rodriguez angrily responded, "I called it way early. I called it way early."
On the next pitch, Rodriguez struck out swinging. When he got back to the dugout, he whispered a whole collection of expletives at himself. After the game, he couldn't be bated into commenting on that incident.
Clemens talked, however, saying that he was asking Posada who had called timeout. When Posada said, "Alex," umpire Wally Bell jumped in and said he was the one who called time. That was it.
Clemens, who was clocked as high as 98 mph, has built a reputation through his career for pitching up and in. Though he didn't admit to throwing at Rodriguez, he didn't deny it either.
"We had a game plan and we stuck right with it," he said. "We wanted to work inside, obviously. I don't think the first one was that close. The second one I think was closer. But I don't think the first one was that close. I was just trying to go at his hands inside, and actually, for strikes both times."
If that was genuinely the case, it is understandable. Clemens also has a penchant for getting wild at times, as he did in the third inning, when his first pitch to David Bell sailed over the heads of Posada and Bell, crashing into the backstop.
When asked for his take on the accusations by Piniella and Rodriguez, Yankees manager Joe Torre sort of shrugged them off, saying that pitching inside is "part of the game. You have to pitch in to be effective. He's not trying to hit anybody. And if he is, it surprises me. But you still have to pitch your game.
"The thing is, when you talk to pitchers about pitching in off the plate, if you're going to make a mistake, you have to make it in a little bit further, because if you make a mistake the other way, it is over the middle of the plate and somebody knocks your brains out."
Lost in all the postgame trash talking was a brilliant performance by one of baseball's all-time best. Saturday's game, no-hitter or not, fit like the final piece of the puzzle for Clemens' career, which has seen five Cy Young Awards, two 20-strikeout games and a World Series championship -- but never a dominating performance of this magnitude in the postseason.
And it came at age 38, some four years after the Boston Red Sox let Clemens go, believing he might be done. Martin's double, which glanced off first baseman Tino Martinez's glove, was the only hard-hit ball of the night.
"Tonight was special," he said. "I feel real fortunate that I've been able to continue at this stage of my career."
Martin even admitted that the only reason he got the hit was because Clemens had thrown him the same pitch, a slider down and in, earlier in the game, and Martin was able to analyze it between innings on a clubhouse VCR.
"It was a good pitch, a very good pitch," Martin said. "I just recognized it because I saw it on tape."
Clemens, whose teams had been just 4-10 in postseason games he started, has long been accused of trying too hard when the leaves start changing colors. In fact, just before Saturday's game, Denny Neagle was asked at a press conference about Clemens' postseason struggles.
He couldn't pinpoint the problem, but said, "I think maybe it was one of those things where he felt some sort of urgency or pressure. And people have given him the label that he's not a big-game pitcher. Maybe it's that."
Three hours, one hit, 15 strikeouts, and a place in the baseball record books later, Clemens hopes to have shagged that label.
"I'm tired of people saying I try to hard," he said. "I'd like to think I'm just as intense on a Saturday afternoon in July than I am in the postseason."
Clemens' last strikeout victim was Martin, ironically, a fastball hitter who went down whiffing at a fastball. But that's Clemens: basic, simple, overpowering. On Saturday, all three of his pitches -- his fastball, slider and splitter -- worked exceptionally, creating an ominous task for any opposing hitter.
"When a guy is throwing like that, there's not a whole lot you can do," Rodriguez said, seconds after spouting off. "The split-finger only works if you set up the fastball, but if you establish that, when the split-finger dives, you don't have a chance."
Especially when you're concerned about safety.
Wayne Drehs is a staff writer at ESPN.com.
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