SEATTLE – Mike Piazza’s bum toe wasn’t about to keep him from doing what he loves to do, which is start at catcher for the National League All-Stars.
In the days leading up to last night’s 72nd All-Star Game at Safeco Field, Piazza talked about how much he enjoys playing in the game that he loved watching as a child.
He talked about how much he missed playing in last year’s game, from which he was forced out by a Roger Clemens fastball to the head on July 8.
What Piazza didn’t say was that he wanted to play in this game so that he could exact some revenge on The Rocket and take him deep in front of a global audience. He didn’t need to say it. It’s obvious.
These men do not like each other, not one bit.
The timing of so many factors made the Clemens drilling of Piazza almost inevitable.
First, Clemens was fresh off a stay at the minor league complex in Tampa, where he was recovering from a strained groin. During that stay, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner let Rocket know one of the things he liked about him was the way he intimidated hitters. He wondered where that intimidator had gone.
Second, Piazza owned Clemens with a .583 lifetime batting average against him in 12 at bats. Piazza had homered off Clemens as recently as a month earlier.
Piazza crowds the plate. Since way back when, pitchers owned by hitters have moved them off the plate in an effort to turn their legs to jelly and reclaim the plate.
Clemens, no doubt, was looking for an excuse to plant a seed of discomfort in Piazza’s mind and Piazza gave him that excuse two pitches before the pitch that left Piazza on his back, eyes shut, stadium hushed.
Piazza called a late timeout, an invitation to headhunters to get out their spears.
When Piazza stepped out, the fire in Clemens raged like a furnace.
The day after being drilled, Piazza appeared at a news conference and announced to the world that he was convinced Clemens had perfect location on the pitch.
In doing so, Piazza violated the unwritten baseball rule of settling such matters on the field, instead in a public forum. That so irked Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer that a year later Zimmer revealed his dark side in an obscenity-laced rip job of Piazza, whom Zimmer said he lost respect for because of his reaction to being flattened.
When the teams met again, the World Series was hyped as a rematch between combatants Clemens and Piazza.
The prevailing wisdom forecasted no trouble between the players because this was, after all, the World Series, no stage for a personal feud.
The forecast was dead wrong.
Piazza shattered his bat and Clemens picked up the spear that came in front of him and fired it with vengeance in front of the feet of Piazza, who was on his way to first.
Clemens did a poor job of trying to explain himself, first saying he thought it was the ball.
The best guess as to what happened: Clemens, so incredibly pumped up for the game, in that instant must have thought Piazza was throwing his bat at him as retaliation for the beaning.
Curiously, Clemens was not tossed from the game.
Piazza repeatedly has refused the overtures of Clemens to talk about the matter, either by phone or in person.
It’s conceivable The Rocket’s ill will toward Piazza runs deeper than the All-Star catcher’s remarkable success against him.
Since early in his career with the Dodgers, Piazza has been considered a celebrity and has been linked romantically with various celebrity models. He is covered like a celebrity from coast-to-coast.
Clemens, though a bigger star by baseball standards, is star-struck by celebrities and is fond of dropping celebrity names into conversations. Yet, he never quite has been covered like a man whose celebrity extends beyond a baseball diamond.
Whatever the origin of Clemens’ ill will toward Piazza, the popular Mets catcher has done nothing to temper it.