Long Shot (41 page)

The series then switched to Shea, and Benny Agbayani delivered a colossal home run in the bottom of the thirteenth to put us ahead, two games to one. In game four, I walked with two outs in the first and Ventura came through with a blast. That was more than Bobby Jones would need. He pitched a one-hitter in a 4–0 victory that set us up in the league championship series against the Cardinals. God bless them, they had beaten the Braves.

We started fast in St. Louis. In the first inning of the first game, against Darryl Kile, Timo Perez doubled to lead off, Alfonzo walked, I doubled in a run, and Ventura drove in another with a fly ball. My double—past Placido Polanco at third base, on the first pitch—was especially welcome, considering the funk I’d been in. At least our bench coach, John Stearns, thought so. When I was standing on second, Stearns, who was miked for television, suddenly went off, shouting, “The monster’s out of the cage! The monster’s out of the cage!” It became a mantra. Meat Loaf—a huge baseball fan—even recorded a song, “The Monster Is Loose!”

Mike Hampton took care of the rest, pretty much, with seven shutout innings, then turned it over to Leiter for game two. The Cardinals’ starter was Rick Ankiel, a twenty-one-year-old, phenom lefty who’d been having serious problems with his control. He’d thrown five wild pitches in one inning against the Braves in their division series, an all-time record. As Timo Perez stepped in to lead off, Pat Mahomes came running down from the bullpen, yelling, “Hey, this is the motherfucker with the control problems, isn’t it?” Then Ankiel fired his first pitch over Timo’s helmet, sending him sprawling, and Mahomes goes, “God
damn
!”

Timo had just been called up for the first time in September and was not exactly a student of the game yet. He didn’t know who anybody was, and got up all ticked off, assuming that Ankiel was throwing at him. He ended up taking strike three before the fun started. Alfonzo walked. Then, with me batting, Ankiel threw one in the general direction of the press box and Fonzi went to second. I fouled off a two-two fastball, and Ankiel finally walked me on another fastball to the screen that sent Fonzi to third. Zeile hit a fly ball to bring in Alfonzo, and Ankiel walked Robin on four pitches. Agbayani followed with a double and I scored all the way from second (yes, that’s a joke). That was it for Ankiel. He would start only six more games in the major leagues before converting to the outfield.

I homered in the third against Britt Reames, but the Cardinals tied it, 3–3, in the fifth. Ultimately, the hero was again Jay Payton, who ripped a run-scoring, ninth-inning single to center field off Mike Timlin to put us up 6–5. When Benitez held them in the bottom of the inning, we had taken control of the series on the road.

At Shea, the Cardinals beat us in game three, but in the next one, after falling behind 2–0 in the top of the first, we jumped on Kile with back-to-back-to-back doubles by Alfonzo, me, and Ventura, and then another one from Agbayani. Altogether, we scored seven times in the first two innings. I homered in the fourth to put us up 8–3, on the way to a 10–6 victory that left us just one slim win from the Mets’ first National League championship since 1986. In game five, we came out hitting, Hampton threw a three-hitter—he was the series MVP—and it was ours, by a score of 7–0.

The clubhouse celebration was positively euphoric. It was an incredible, spontaneous, dreamlike kind of happiness that I’d never before experienced.

We were in the World Series.

Against the Yankees.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Give New York a big story and the city will inevitably make it bigger. The first World Series between the Yankees and Mets was not enough; not even with an irresistible, custom-made nostalgia factor—the flashback to the famous Subway World Series matchups of the 1940s and ’50s, the Yankees against the New York Giants and especially the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 2000, the boroughs were bloodthirsty. It would be the first time Clemens and I had faced off since he hit me in the head. They wanted a cage fight.

To the guys in our clubhouse, however, including me, the personal grudge match was, at best, number three in the pecking order of importance. Number two was taking out the Yankees and changing our image as second fiddles. Number one was winning a World Series, no matter who it came against.

Anyway, Clemens wasn’t pitching until game two. In the meantime, we were loose enough, I suppose. The team chartered a couple of buses to the Bronx for game one, and John Franco rode shotgun in the police cruiser that led the way. Ventura—talk about keeping loose!—took batting practice without underwear. Then, about forty minutes before the game started, as I was putting on my road uniform, Bobby walked over and told me to come to his office because somebody in there wanted to say hello. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Yogi Berra. What a treat. He made some small talk about the great rivalry between the Yankees and Brooklyn—their four World Series of the fifties occurred in a span of five years—and I didn’t have much to offer in return. Since it was already October 21, I said, “We’re getting started a little late, aren’t we?” And Yogi said, “One year [1955], we played seven games and were done by October the fourth.” When I walked out of there, I couldn’t wait to get going: Saturday night at Yankee Stadium. Al Leiter versus Andy Pettitte. New York versus New York, for the championship of the world. There was no place in the universe I would rather have been.

That said, I’d have preferred not to be there beyond the ninth inning, under the circumstances. The game was scoreless in the top of the sixth when Timo Perez singled and was on first with two outs as Zeile lifted a long fly ball that bounced off the very top of the wall in left field. Thinking it was going to be a home run, as most of us did, Timo raised his arm in celebration and slowed up just enough to get thrown out on a relay from David Justice to Derek Jeter to Jorge Posada at the plate. We all make mental mistakes—especially as rookies—and I should point out that we might not have been in the World Series if it weren’t for Timo; but the fact is, we’d had some momentum going for us, and there was a feeling that we lost it on that killer of a play.

Even so, Leiter had us ahead 3–2 when he left after seven innings. That’s how it stood when a double by Kurt Abbott gave us runners on second and third with one out in the top of the ninth. A big hit would put us in great shape, but it would have to come against Mariano Rivera. He overmatched Perez and Alfonzo with that amazing cutter of his, and the damn Yankees tied the game in the bottom of the inning against Benitez, on a sacrifice fly by Chuck Knoblauch. Benitez fanned Jeter to send it into extra innings, but we could do nothing with Mariano or Mike Stanton. The Yankees beat us in the twelfth on Jose Vizcaino’s bases-loaded single off Turk Wendell. We were now playing from behind.

On a cold, windy Sunday night, Mike Hampton—not
I
—was Clemens’s opponent in game two. By the time I came up in the first inning, Timo and Fonzi had already struck out. The Rocket was on his game and obviously pumped up to maximum intensity.

In spite of all the flashbulbs popping and the feeding frenzy over Roger and me, the scenario was not as unsettling as that eerie night back in July. I sincerely believed that, with all the hype surrounding the showdown, Clemens wouldn’t dare throw at me again. He’d taken a public beating for it the last time and since then had come under more scrutiny for buzzing Alex Rodriguez on consecutive pitches—he fired the ball up around A-Rod’s neck—in the ALCS against Seattle. Rodriguez didn’t have much to say about it afterward, but Lou Piniella, the Mariners’ manager, did. And he wasn’t the first manager to complain about Clemens. When Roger pitched for Toronto and hit Jeter and Scott Brosius, Joe Torre himself had been one of those calling him out. Now, with the microscope he was under and the stage he was on, I couldn’t imagine him pulling any more of his macho bullshit. On the other hand, Roger was known for working himself into a competitive fever that led to some strange things.

I took strike one, as was my custom against just about everybody but
Greg Maddux. I also took strike two, on the outside corner, which wasn’t the plan. Clemens was sharp, all right. I stepped out, blew on my hands, then watched ball one zip by, inside. Then he poured a fastball in on my fists. I tried to fend it off and my thin-handled bat blew apart in two places. About fifteen inches of it stayed in my grip, a fragment dropped in front of the plate like a bad bunt, and the splintered barrel bounced unevenly toward the mound. I didn’t know where the ball was—for all I knew, it might have blooped over Tino Martinez’s head beyond first base, which wouldn’t be unusual—so I took off running for a step or two, until I realized that I’d sliced the pitch toward the Yankees’ dugout.

Right about then, the barrel came whizzing by in front of my feet.

What the hell?

Clemens had fielded it on the big hop and chucked it in my direction, jagged end and all, with plenty of velocity. Stunned, and with the bat handle still in my hand—I’m not sure if I even realized that—I turned toward the mound and walked that way with a purpose, yelling at Clemens, “What’s your problem? What the fuck is your problem?”

He said he thought the bat was the
ball.

Meanwhile, home plate umpire Charlie Reliford was arriving to intercept me, and Clemens, with his glove extended like he was asking for a new baseball, turned to him and hollered the same thing—that he thought he was picking up the
ball
. I asked Charlie what Roger was talking about, and all he would say was, “Let’s go, let’s go.”

Both teams were out on the field by this time, and somebody was shouting at me to get the fuck back in the batter’s box. I couldn’t tell who it was. I was yelling back at a voice, pushing my way toward a closer, clearer confrontation. The fans were howling. There was so much ambiguous energy buzzing around, I couldn’t process it all.

My initial intention had been to get to Clemens and throw a punch at his face. It was a strategy that I’d actually mapped out ahead of time. When Robin Ventura had charged Nolan Ryan with his head down, as if to tackle him, that had only exposed Robin. I’d been working with a friend, John Bruno, who was a karate guy, with the express purpose of knowing what to do if Clemens ever threw at me again. I would approach with my fist pulled back. I figured he’d throw his glove out for protection. I’d parry the glove and then get after it.

But there were complications. The least of them was the realization that Clemens was a big guy and I stood a pretty fair chance of getting my ass kicked in front of Yankee Stadium and the world. That was a legitimate concern,
but not a compelling one. A bigger factor was the World Series itself. It was the first inning of a critical game from which it would be patently stupid to get ejected. To indulge my anger and sense of revenge without regard for my team and teammates . . . that would simply have been bad baseball.

There was something else holding me back, as well. Leading up to this night, there had been so much public clamoring to see Clemens and me go mano-a-mano, such a loathsome display of bloodlust, that I wanted no part of it for that very reason. It had evolved into a gladiator mentality. It’s my job to feed the mob? I have to run out and fight Roger Clemens because the fans
expect
me to? I had no interest in being the people’s puppet. Never did. The whole atmosphere just sucked the steam out of me.

On top of all that, the situation occupied a gray zone in my personal rules of engagement. I had no predetermined response for somebody flinging the jagged end of a bat at my feet, but it fell under the general parameters of being thrown at. When that happens, you’re seldom certain of the intent. You wait to see the pitcher’s reaction. You yell at the guy and check his response. If he yells back, waves you to the mound, spreads his palms, glares at you the wrong way, tells you to get your ass to first base, or in any fashion attempts to intimidate you further, it’s on. If he just rubs the ball and looks in the other direction, I was cool with that. Part of the game.

Clemens’s reaction was of the latter variety, dragging the whole crazy scene even deeper into the murky realm of the bizarre. His hurl of the bat had looked blatantly, preposterously violent, and yet, there he stood, admitting his mistake and protesting his innocence. He wasn’t looking for a fight. He wasn’t staring at me and screaming, “Fuck you, Piazza!” He was addressing the umpire, trying to cool the situation down, pleading
confusion
—and in doing so, compounding the overwhelming sense of it. There was doubt. It all happened so fast. Maybe, with his adrenaline pumping, Roger just grabbed the bat instinctively and thought, get this shit out of here. Maybe, considering where the ball went, he didn’t know I was running.

Images, questions, emotions, and raucous shouting all pounded me in a bewildering, paralyzing overload, trapping me in my spot, short of the mound. So did Reliford and the scrum of Mets and Yankees. There was no fight.

Once the field was cleared, the game resumed with no ejections, and on the next pitch I bounced out to second base. Immediately, Clemens dashed off to a room in the Yankee clubhouse to calm himself down. He did a good job of it. He was untouchable for the eight innings he pitched—no runs, two hits, nine strikeouts.

The Yankees had less trouble with Hampton and led 6–0 until we scored
five in the ninth, two of them on my home run off the foul pole against Jeff Nelson—which I considered quite an accomplishment because that guy was murder on me. We even put up a couple of runs against Rivera, on a homer by Payton. But the only thing it got us was the hell out of Yankee Stadium.

After the game, Torre defended Clemens with a level of animation that he almost never showed and Clemens defended himself in a manner that illuminated nothing. The more I heard and later read, the angrier I got. If Roger thought the barrel was the ball, why was he throwing it at me—or toward the Yankees’ batboy, as he insisted—instead of to first base? If he didn’t know I was running, why did he register no surprise, or not apologize, when he saw that I
was
? But those thoughts occurred after the fact, in the sorting-out process that followed the fury—around the time the critics were assailing me for not rushing into a fight.