There is a difference between being a tough guy and being a knucklehead, between demanding the baseball and demanding to be heard. John Maine really needs to learn those lessons, and fast, because in a season when so much has gone poorly for the Mets, Maine is threatening to become the face of all that dysfunction.
Yesterday, a day after petulantly walking off the mound, confronting his manager in the dugout and generally acting like a 3-year-old even 3½ hours later, Maine didn’t back off his infantile behavior one step . . . or crawl.
“I have no clue about anything,” Maine said before adding, as only a tween would, “Whatever.”
Maine had an agenda he wanted to get out yesterday, a few hours before he was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a tired right shoulder and a day after his five-pitch outing against the Nationals ended with a five-pitch walk, an early hook, a full-blown dugout fit and a spoiled-brat pout as he tried to explain himself. The new message with this: Maine is a gamer. He is a fighter. He wants the ball, consequences be damned.
“Even if I get my head handed to me,” he declared.
“Even if I have to throw left-handed,” he vowed.
To which Jerry Manuel — who has never before looked as managerial as he has in these two days, in perfectly dealing with this ridiculousness — replied: “I don’t know about left-handed. Although maybe he has better stuff left-handed.”
And then the manager laughed.
It is no laughing matter, of course. It is never terribly funny when a player and a coach or a manager quarrel, and if the Maine-Manuel confrontation in the dugout at Nationals Park on Thursday night won’t necessarily approach the Billy Martin-Reggie Jackson showdown in terms of ugliness or historical significance, it was still a terrible back-and-forth that continued later on.
“I don’t have enough clout,” Maine said after the game, sounding like he had just taken off a No. 41 Tom Seaver jersey. “I don’t have enough star power to say anything. I would like an explanation. Me throwing 85 miles an hour, I don’t think is a good explanation for me to be taken out of the game.”
That was followed by this gem from pitching coach Dan Warthen: “When he’s throwing that way, there’s gotta be something incorrect in that arm. John’s a habitual liar in a lot of ways about his own health. We have to be the boss out there.”
And this from catcher Rod Barajas: “He didn’t look right.”
Forget that Manuel is in no position to have lots of patience to see if Maine could work his way out of this; neither are the Mets. Later on, as the Mets tried very hard to blow a 10-1 lead (on the same day the Braves had earlier scored seven in the ninth to pull off a miracle comeback), you could sense the fatalism of Mets fans reaching a launching point; nobody likes to think of a game on May 20 as a must-win. But all things considered, this was.
If you want a real culprit, you might want to turn to general manager Omar Minaya, who basically said that Mike Pelfrey, Maine and Oliver Perez weren’t fighting for jobs in spring training. Pelfrey, despite a terrible spring, rose above that entitlement issue, and has had a terrific year, mostly because he has All-Star stuff. Perez already is in the bullpen. And Maine, with exactly one above-average big league season under his belt (from a time when he routinely threw 95 and 96 mph) has been spotty at best.
No, he doesn’t have enough clout, and he shouldn’t. No, he doesn’t deserve to be cut any slack. He is John Maine, reclamation project, at a time when the Mets can’t afford to be holding open auditions on the pitcher’s mound. He should shut up, starting right now, as he starts a fresh stint on the disabled list.
And if this really is the declining hour of Manuel’s tenure, it might also have been his finest one.