SEATTLE -- If Cliff Floyd vs. Bobby Valentine was the All-Star main event Monday, the subcard on the New York media-circus fight card was Mike Piazza vs. Roger Clemens.
|  | | Mike Piazza uses the handle of his broken bat to make his point with Roger Clemens last October. |
Piazza is the National League's starting catcher. Clemens is the American League's starting pitcher. So finally, nine months after their great Batgate incident in the World Series, they can face each other and give the New York tabloids something to splatter on their back pages.
"I don't think there's anything that needs to be gotten over with," said AL manager Joe Torre. "Maybe for people who want it to be over with, it will be over with. But I don't think it's that big a thing.
"The reason I kept Roger from pitching against the Mets is that I knew it would have kept everybody on edge. An All-Star Game is different. Roger said, 'In an All-Star Game, I'm not worried about pitching to somebody's weakness.' It's just a different atmosphere."
To hear Clemens talk Monday, you'd have thought nothing had ever happened between these two guys, outside of an occasional hanging splitter.
"I've faced Mike before," he deadpanned, in classic Roger-speak. "He's not the only one I have to worry about."
And Piazza was equally wary of getting mixed up in this carnival act one more time.
"I haven't really even thought about it," he said. "I don't look at this the way other people look at it. I look at it as a tough at- bat against a tough pitcher, and I'll just do the best I can."
The New York Post, of course, might have a different slant. But sooner or later, these guys were bound to meet again before their careers ended. So even Torre acknowledged that getting this much-ballyhooed confrontation out of the way in an All-Star game might be best for everybody.
"I hope it would have been over with by now anyway," he said. "But if it takes an at-bat here, that's fine with me."
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.
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