Incident Gives Black Eye to Many of Those Involved

TAMPA, Fla. â€”  I am watching replays of the Wednesday night incident involving Guillermo Mota and Mike Piazza and reading comments by the Dodgers and New York Mets e-mailed to me by colleagues.

Though several hundred miles from the rhetoric, I still feel the vibrations from the Dodger spin and see Mota’s blue cap take the shape of a dunce.

I know that’s a little harsh, but answer this:

Why do you suppose Omar Minaya, the Montreal Expo general manager, was willing to dump a pitcher with a million-dollar arm -- and a ... well, inflation makes it hard to put a true value on his head -- in a four-player trade with the Dodgers for Matt Herges?

Why do you suppose, as Brian Jordan candidly acknowledged, neither Mota’s organization nor teammates (if truth had been told Thursday) are happy that the 29-year-old right-hander chose to provoke Piazza and his team, assuring the Dodgers they will open the season shy one relief pitcher and leaving teammates vulnerable for retaliation?

“I would be surprised if one of us doesn’t get it in the ear,� said Paul Lo Duca, referring to a retaliatory fastball, not a cotton swab. “When somebody like Mike gets hit, they’re going to go after [Shawn Green] or [Fred McGriff].�

The Dodgers and Mets open a two-game series in Mexico City on Saturday.

A prudent Jim Tracy, the Dodger manager, has decided to leave Mota in Vero Beach.

If Green and McGriff are hoping their passports get revoked before today’s departure, it’s not that they have any interest in joining Mota for dinner.

Of course, this shouldn’t all be laid on Mota.

Piazza can’t be absolved.

Nor can Tracy and pitching coach Jim Colborn.

Neither went to the mound in the sixth inning to tell Mota he should focus on business after his first pitch to Piazza was far inside, leaving no doubt that he was intent on revenge for an incident last March when Piazza, hit in the hip by a Mota pitch earlier in that game at Vero Beach, came out of the dugout and applied a choke hold on the Dodger pitcher as he walked down the right-field line after being removed from the game.

Piazza was pulled away before real damage was done, but he went after Mota again Wednesday when the second fastball hit him in the left shoulder.

Mota, whose denials that he intentionally threw at Piazza were dismissed by teammates and at odds with the umpire’s report that will get him suspended, might have figured that if the umpire wasn’t going to warn him after the first pitch and his manager wasn’t going to tell him to back off, he would make sure the second pitch found its mark.

Asked Thursday why he didn’t go out and cool Mota after the first pitch, Tracy was contradictory.

He said that he and Colborn recognized there was “history involved� but if they had gone out after the first pitch it would have suggested “we were totally aware of what was going on.�

Totally? Partially? What’s the difference? They had time to prevent an incendiary incident, and the decision to let history take its course gave weight to the accusations by Met Manager Art Howe and General Manager Steve Phillips that it was a setup by the Dodgers.

Tracy, of course, heatedly disputed that notion and argued with some validity that if this was a setup by the Dodgers, what was last year, when Piazza waited to ambush Mota as he walked by the dugout?

Said Jordan: “If [Mota] didn’t get choked on national TV last year, [Wednesday’s fight] would never have happened.�

Jordan’s point -- aside from the obvious -- was that a young and inexperienced pitcher had his pride wounded a year ago and acted on that emotion Wednesday rather than thinking through the situation. Of course, at 29 and about to participate in his sixth big league season, Mota is not that young or inexperienced.

Tracy and others also argued with validity that the enraged Piazza had no business invading their clubhouse in search of Mota, whose retreat was one of the fastest and shrewdest of the modern era. Critics will argue that he should have taken it like a man, but riot police might have been needed if Piazza had found him in the clubhouse.

Of course, Piazza’s own manhood has taken some hits, and that might have contributed to his anger. He was criticized even in his own clubhouse after Game 2 of the 2000 World Series for failing to charge the mound when the New York Yankees’ Roger Clemens, who had beaned Piazza in a midseason interleague game, threw the barrel of a broken bat in Piazza’s direction as he trotted up the first-base line after fouling off a pitch.

Instead of Mild Mike, as he was that night, he was Mad Mike on Wednesday, as the headline on the back page of Thursday’s New York Daily News screamed, prompting me to ask Clemens in the Yankee clubhouse at Tampa’s Legends Field if he thought Piazza’s reaction to Mota might have been a long carry-over from his inaction against him.

“Surely, you have something better to ask than that,� Clemens said, giving me the benefit of the doubt. “My life and my stuff isn’t tied to [Piazza].

“I’d love to answer questions, but that’s not even a question, please.�

In the big picture, this is the question:

Why has it become so popular to brawl in spring training games that mean nothing?

A year ago, the Angels were forced to open the season with Scott Spiezio and Troy Glaus suspended for their roles in a March fight with the San Diego Padres.

Yankee Manager Joe Torre pondered that question at Legends Field and said it was symptomatic of the ESPN culture and a changing game in which “getting hit used to be accepted as part of it. It took getting hit three times before you retaliated. It’s a whole different game now. I even had a player charge the mound after getting hit with the bases loaded. I was embarrassed.�

The Dodgers were embarrassed -- and rightfully chagrined -- by one of their own.