MONTREAL – Up 10-0 in the sixth, the Expos Vladimir Guerrero was upset. On a slightly inside 2-0 fastball from Turk Wendell, Guerrero thought the ball was too close.
“[Guerrero] is a freakin’ baby,” Wendell said after the Mets’ 10-0 loss to the Expos. “He stands so far off the plate, the ball is not even close to him. What is he crying about?”
Met players and Expos manager Felipe Alou to exception to Guerrero deciding to swing at a3-0 pitch, up 10 runs. He knocked the ball to the center-field wall where Tsuyoshi Shinjo hauled it in. As Wendell walked off the field, he had some words for Guerrero and Guerrero stared at Wendell.
“What is he staring at?” Wendell asked after the game. “If he wants to stare at something, I’ll give him something to stare at. I could see if the ball had hit him in the back or the ball was at his face or something, but the ball is not even close to hitting him. The more he complains about it, the more people are going to pitch him inside.”
Expos manager Felipe Alou, living up to his classy reputation, decided to give Guerrero a seat on the bench the following inning. Alou didn’t say that swinging 3-0 was the reason, but it seemed apparent.
“No one’s bigger than the game,” Alou said. “Even before I was playing, there were no 3-0 swings [in a blowout]. Once it’s seven runs, [there’s] no stolen bases and no 3-0 swings.”
The feeling in the Mets clubhouse afterward was that the young Expos need to learn how the game is played. If the Mets were going to throw at somebody to send a message, they would’ve done it earlier, they said.
Guerrero is as talented and productive a player as there is in the game, but he owns a reputation for getting upset whenever someone pitches inside. It showed again yesterday and the crowd reacted.
On the 2-0 pitch, the 15,317 groaned with Guerrero as they were also upset that Wendell would think about going after their star.
“Every time the ball is inside, the crowd has a reaction,” Bobby Valentine said. “I didn’t think the ball was that inside. It was low and in.”
But it was a purpose pitch, the Mets said. And if the rhetoric and glares continue between the two teams there could be more soon to come.