Clemens’ Suspension, Fine Upheld by Commissioner

Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent announced Friday that he was rejecting an appeal by Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens and upholding Clemens’ five-game suspension and $10,000 fine. Those were Clemens’ penalties for shoving an umpire and threatening another after he was ejected from Game 4 of the American League playoffs with the Oakland Athletics last October.

The suspension began with Friday night’s game between the Red Sox and Kansas City Royals and will prevent Clemens, who is 4-0 with a 0.28 earned-run average and a streak of 30 scoreless innings, from making a scheduled start Sunday against the Royals. He is scheduled to pitch again Friday against the Chicago White Sox.

Clemens checked out of the team’s Kansas City hotel after learning of Vincent’s decision and left for his Houston home, where he said in a statement released by the Red Sox that he was relieved to have the situation behind him, adding:

“I feel like maybe I wasted some time (with the appeal), but I felt it needed to be done to show my side of the situation.

“I feel I’m getting penalized for what happened after the ejection. How was I supposed to react? What would people have thought if I just quietly handed (Manager) Joe (Morgan) the ball and walked away?”

Gene Orza, associate general counsel of the Major League Players Assn., issued a statement in which he accused Vincent of a political decision and intellectual dishonesty. Orza said Vincent ignored evidence that Clemens didn’t deserve to be ejected and based his decision only on what happened after the ejection.

Clemens was ejected by plate umpire Terry Cooney in the second inning of Game 4 in response to comments Cooney claimed he heard Clemens make from the mound regarding his ball and strike calls. He was suspended and fined by American League president Bobby Brown for shoving umpire Jim Evans and threatening to “get” Cooney during the volatile argument after the ejection.

Clemens was scheduled to serve the suspension at the start of this season, but the appeal process delayed that.

Vincent conducted a hearing last week at which Clemens, agent Randy Hendricks and attorneys for the players’ association testified, as did a lip-reader brought in by Clemens to decipher videotapes of his comments directed at Cooney while on the mound.

In his nine-page decision, Vincent said that testimony by the lip-reader supported Clemens’ version of his exchange with Cooney, but that he was upholding the penalties because Clemens shoved Evans and threatened Cooney.

“Putting aside the circumstances leading up to the ejection and the precise words Clemens shouted at Cooney after the ejection, I find that the physical contact with umpire Evans and the statement that Clemens would find out where Cooney lives and ‘get’ him . . . to be serious actions that warrant significant discipline,” Vincent said.

He added that Cooney’s report on the incident to the league office did contain inaccuracies.

“It is my view that some of the statements Cooney asserted he heard Clemens make prior to the ejection were not . . . uttered at that time,” Vincent said.

The commissioner also said that the videotapes and lip-reader’s testimony convinced him that Clemens had not used some of the words Cooney reported, but there was no evidence to suggest Cooney intentionally included inaccuracies in his report.

Agent Hendricks said Friday that the contact with Evans was accidental and that the heat-of-the-moment remark to Cooney, although inappropriate, was never intended as a serious threat.

He said the inaccuracies in Cooney’s report and the testimony of the lip-reader proved Clemens was not the instigator and did not deserve the penalties that Vincent upheld.

“We’re extremely disappointed, but not surprised, not incredulous,” Hendricks said. “We would have been incredulous only if an impartial arbitrator had made a similar decision. This was just another opportunity for the commissioner to show who runs the game.”

Said Orza, in his statement:

“The commissioner obviously did not have the courage to admit the truth, that at least some part of Clemens’ discipline was related to the belief--now untenable in light of the evidence--that the ejection was justified.

“Instead, in order not to offend the umpires and league president, he asks us to pretend that the original penalty was completely about what Clemens did after he was ejected. That’s clever. It accomplishes the goal, but to the commissioner’s discredit it happens to be intellectually dishonest.

“I’m confident the commissioner didn’t enjoy having to be dishonest in order to protect the umpires and league president, but he can’t blame us for that. All we did was give him the chance to be a judge. It was his decision to be a politician.”

In response Friday, Vincent sent a letter to Don Fehr, executive director of the union. In the letter, Vincent pointed out testimony by Orza during the appeal in which Orza said Clemens could walk away and accept the penalties if Vincent were to conclude publicly that there were mistakes in Cooney’s report and that Clemens didn’t say some of the things Cooney attributed to him.

This was the essence of Vincent’s conclusion, leaving him perplexed by Orza’s reaction, a spokesman for the commissioner said Friday, adding:

“Fay also quoted Winston Churchill as saying, ‘Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.’ ”

Based on his $2.5-million salary this year, the suspension could cost Clemens about $82,000, providing the Red Sox withhold it.

The Associated Press quoted sources as saying Cooney’s crew is scheduled to work the game in which Clemens next pitches.

Cooney seemed to confirm that, saying there would be some anxiety but that, if he is behind the plate: “I’ll try to do the same professional job I try to do every game. There is no way I’ll go out there and make myself look ridiculous.”