The two most controversial incidents of competitive violence perpetuated upon a New York athlete in the first 20 years of the century didn’t exactly unite the Big Apple’s famously divided fan bases.
The mere mention of Chase Utley still incites instant rage amongst Mets fans who will not forget Game 2 of the 2015 NL Division series, when Utley’s takeout slide of Ruben Tejada left Tejada with a broken leg and basically ended his career (Tejada, just shy of his 26th birthday when he was injured, has played in just 83 big league games since).
But Yankees fans are generally territorial, and with the Yankees already eliminated from the playoffs and Utley a career-long National Leaguer whose longest exposure to the Yankees came during a 2009 World Series won by the Yankees, the fury generated by Utley’s slide didn’t really resonate one way or the other with the fans of the team across town.
The anger of Mets fans vibrated around the entire city 15 years earlier, when Yankees fans were only too delighted to fan the flames during the multiple Roger Clemens-Mike Piazza duels. Whereas Mets fans (and just about anyone else who’d watched baseball the previous 15 years) thought Clemens beaned and concussed Piazza on July 8 because he was tired of Piazza hitting 450-foot homers off him, Yankees fans — who hated Clemens when he was throwing up and in at their batters as a member of the Red Sox and Blue Jays — insisted Clemens was just trying to throw inside.
A little more than three months later, when Clemens and Piazza met again and Clemens chucked Piazza’s broken bat at him after Piazza fouled a pitch off in Game 2 of the World Series, most Yankees fans either echoed Clemens, who insisted he somehow thought it was the ball, or Joe Torre, who wondered why Clemens would risk getting thrown out of the World Series by trying to maim Piazza. That these explanations made no sense to Mets fans, or many rational people, and further infuriated Mets fans only seemed to encourage Yankees fans to repeat these notions.
Which brings us to Washington Capitals right winger/enforcer/goon Tom Wilson, the last vestige of bipartisanship in an increasingly polarized world.
Wilson added to his resume, such as it is, Monday night, when he punched Rangers left winger Pavel Buchnevich in the back of the head during a scrum in front of the Capitals’ net. A full-on fracas developed, during which Wilson pulled off the helmet of Rangers star Artemi Panarin while throwing him to the ice before he picked Panarin back up and slammed him to the ice again.
Wilson twice slamming a helmet-less player to the ice was arguably the most frightening bit of potential calamity in a sporting event since Nov. 14, 2019, when the Browns’ Myles Garrett tore off the helmet of Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph and used it to hit him on the side of the head. It was also reminiscent of Piazza writing in his autobiography that he believed throwing his wrists up at the last possible instant saved him from a fate far worse than a concussion in July 2000.
Panarin avoided serious injury Monday but will miss the Rangers’ final three games with a lower body ailment apparently suffered during the brawl. In that regard, he’s likely going to be much more fortunate than Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky, whose NHL career ended due to a concussion suffered when Wilson leveled him behind the net during a playoff game in 2015.
That was when Wilson was a 21-year-old who had 46 times as many regular season penalty minutes (323) than goals scored (seven). Over the subsequent six seasons he has, much like Clemens and Utley in their heydays, developed skills far beyond pushing the envelope of what is acceptable heat of the moment behavior. With 13 goals thus far, he’d be on pace for a third straight 20-goal season over a full 82-game schedule.
But Wilson’s reputation for dirty play has only grown. Wilson has missed 27 games due to league suspensions — including seven this season for boarding the Bruins’ Brandon Carlo. Those suspensions have cost him well over a million dollars in salary.
And as with Clemens and Utley, the punishments leave his opponents (and their fan bases) dissatisfied and wondering how to properly exact revenge. On Tuesday, Wilson was fined $5,000, the maximum allowed by the NHL CBA, for punching Buchnevich. Back in 2000, Clemens was fined $50,000 for throwing the bat at Piazza. An initial two-game suspension for Utley was overturned in 2016.
Piazza didn’t go after Clemens in the World Series because, well, it was the World Series. Torre didn’t pitch Clemens at Shea Stadium — where he’d have to bat — until 2002, when Shawn Estes threw the first pitch behind Clemens’ rear end before later homering off him.
Utley batted just once more in the 2015 NLDS but was at the center of one of the great viral moments of all-time the following season, when Noah Syndergaard threw behind Utley at Citi Field on May 28. Umpire Adam Hamari immediately ejected Syndergaard, upon which Terry Collins bolted out of the dugout screaming at crew chief Tom Haillion about leaving his team’s (rear end) in the jackpot.
Utley, whose 204 hit by pitches are eighth-most all-time, never changed his stoic expression and hit two homers later in a 9-1 win. Afterward, he said he didn’t know if the brushback pitch was intentional but he “understood” if it was.
Wilson is no stranger to opponents seeking payback and will face the Rangers one more time tonight, though Rangers coach David Quinn lamented Tuesday the team’s lack of enforcer types. Islanders fans took to Twitter to offer to their arch-rivals the services of enforcers Matt Martin and Ross Johnston. So congratulations, Tom Wilson, for accomplishing the heretofore impossible and becoming the unified heel of New York sports.
