It makes no difference to the Yankees what Troy Percival’s intent was. It only matters that the Angels’ reliever is armed with a nuclear fastball and therefore should avoid throwing in the vicinity of anyone’s head.
If Percival feels the need to back a hitter off the dish, do it with a chest-high heater, attack the belt area or make him dance at the knees. But when Percival unleashes his heat at Derek Jeter’s head, Yankee blood instantly boils.
“I think he threw at him,” a livid Don Zimmer said following a sloppy 9-7 loss to the Angels in front of 25,313 at Yankee Stadium. “He throws way too hard to be throwing at somebody’s head. It’s a God [darn] shame there is a DH because there is no way I am going to ask one of my pitchers to knock [another hitter] down.
“[Jeter] is one of the better players in the game. So what? He is going good. When you throw 96, 97, 98 mph and you throw at somebody’s head, I think it stinks. I am firm believer of pitching inside and pitchers being mean, but not to throw 95 mph fastballs at somebody’s head. He will say the ball slipped. That’s [nonsense]. He was hitting the outside corner with every pitch, to right-handers and left-handers.”
Protecting a 9-7 lead in the ninth with one out, Percival hit Jeter in the left hand with an 0-2 pitch that was clearly up and in. Had Jeter not gotten the hand in the way, the ball would have exploded in his left ear drum.
“Only Jeter’s great athletic ability kept him from getting hit in the head,” said David Cone, tonight’s starter who may have a pitch high and tight for, say, Mo Vaughn, who hit a three-run homer and drove in four runs last night. Remember, Cone let the Royals hitters slide one night after everybody believed Jeff Montgomery drilled Chuck Knoblauch in the ninth inning of a 13-6 Royals victory on April 30.
Adding to the Yankees’ rage was that many of them saw Percival smiling/smirking as he walked off the mound after fanning Bernie Williams to post his sixth save.
Not only did Percival not understand Zimmer’s line of thinking, he questioned the Yankees’ IQ.
“If they think that, they are idiots,” said Percival, who received a huge break from plate umpire Greg Kosc when a 2-2 pitch to Paul O’Neill in the ninth was called a strike despite appearing to be slightly off the plate for the second out. O’Neill, who threw a water cooler out on the field, was ejected and had to be restrained by teammates from getting any closer to Kosc. “I am not going to hit a guy in order to face three of the best hitters [O’Neill, Williams and Tino Martinez] in baseball. I have been around the league long enough, they should know me. Look at my record, I have hit eight guys in [five] years, six of them with breaking balls. Zim hasn’t seen a lot of my games.”
Jeter, who glared at Percival on the way to first, has – and he firmly believes Percival should avoid throwing up and in.
“I don’t know if he was trying to hit me,’ said Jeter, who crushed his eighth homer of the year in the first inning and has reached base in all 31 games. “But a guy who throws that hard, [the head] is not the place to throw.”
The lively bottom of the ninth added life to a stale game. Andy Pettitte put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole in the first when Vaughn doubled home a run. Vaughn would also get Pettitte for a three-run homer in the fourth off a 3-1 down-and-away cut fastball. The Yankees rebounded to give Pettitte a 5-3 lead in the third but when he left after five, Pettitte was looking at a 6-6 tie.
“I was trying to throw everything as hard as I can,” said Pettitte, who was rocked for six runs and nine hits in five innings and sports a hefty 5.90 ERA. “That was ridiculous. I stunk, there is nothing else to say.”
The loss went to Ramiro Mendoza (3-3) who was hurt more by his inability to field a simple toss by Martinez at first in the seventh inning that led to an unearned run. Garret Anderson, who went 4-for-5, homered three batters in front of the miscue.
Who knows what will happen tonight. But until the Angels’ clubhouse was informed of Zimmer’s remarks, the players didn’t even believe Percival hitting Jeter was an issue.
“Oh please, the way we are going,” said manager Terry Collins, whose 14-19 team broke a four-game losing streak and has lost seven of 11. “Why we would we hit a guy in the ninth and bring those guys to the plate?”