GaryMrMets
03-08-2004, 03:27 PM
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/8132806.htm
Posted on Mon, Mar. 08, 2004
Pizza man vows legal action after altercation with 2 Mets outfielders
Daily News Wire Services
The pizza delivery man who had a confrontation with New York Mets outfielders Karim Garcia and Shane Spencer on Thursday night believes they got away with a slap on the wrist. So Eric Vidal, 20, intends to contact a lawyer this morning and pursue criminal and civil legal action, the New York Daily News reported.
"My pride's hurt and there's nothing they can do to replace that. They're going to pay one way or another," Vidal said yesterday in an interview with WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla. He told a station production manager he also had contacted Port St. Lucie police.
"We haven't been informed of anything," a Mets spokesman said. "Until we have the facts, we reserve comment."
Vidal said Garcia began urinating outside the Port St. Lucie pizzeria - "right in front of us, just disrespecting us." Vidal said he and other employees of Big Apple Pizza, located next to a sports bar where the players had been, asked them to leave. "And they started running their mouths," Vidal said. "So we said some things back to them."
Eventually, the players' wives hustled them into an SUV, but the incident wasn't over.
"The dude in the passenger side was hanging out the window saying some real nasty stuff to me," Vidal said, apparently referring to Garcia. "So I gave it right back to him. I wasn't going to let him walk all over me... The driver [Spencer] jumped out the truck and ran at me...I tripped over the curb. I fell down. He jumped on top of me and hit me three times in the side. By then his buddy got out the other side and came and jumped on top of me."
"I don't want to sound like a girl or anything," Vidal continued, "but my pride was taken from me, especially now that I know it was the Mets and it's all over everywhere - New York, here, people I don't know. It's not something that you can be happy about... And these guys think they got away with it. And they probably will."
Vidal said he was interviewed by a Mets representative, who promised the team would stay in touch. But when he read press accounts yesterday that the Mets had closed the matter by internally disciplining the players, Vidal became irate.
Noteworthy
• John Henry Williams, the son of Hall of Famer Ted Williams who pushed to have his father's body frozen, died late Saturday of leukemia in a hospital in Los Angeles, an attorney for Ted Williams' family said. He was 35.
• Commissioner Bud Selig will join a handful of sports officials Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where he will testify before a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on steroids. Also expected to attend are Donald Fehr, head of the baseball players union; NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue; Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL players union; and Terry Madden, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and a critic of baseball's drug-testing program.
• New York Yankees rightfielder Gary Sheffield had an MRI exam on his sore right thumb. He jammed the thumb Saturday.
• Red Sox executive Mike Dee rejected an offer to become president of the Los Angeles Dodgers and will become Boston's chief operating officer.
• Norm Charlton, the veteran relief pitcher who has tried to come back from shoulder injuries the last 2 years, said he is retiring at 41.
Posted on Mon, Mar. 08, 2004
Pizza man vows legal action after altercation with 2 Mets outfielders
Daily News Wire Services
The pizza delivery man who had a confrontation with New York Mets outfielders Karim Garcia and Shane Spencer on Thursday night believes they got away with a slap on the wrist. So Eric Vidal, 20, intends to contact a lawyer this morning and pursue criminal and civil legal action, the New York Daily News reported.
"My pride's hurt and there's nothing they can do to replace that. They're going to pay one way or another," Vidal said yesterday in an interview with WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla. He told a station production manager he also had contacted Port St. Lucie police.
"We haven't been informed of anything," a Mets spokesman said. "Until we have the facts, we reserve comment."
Vidal said Garcia began urinating outside the Port St. Lucie pizzeria - "right in front of us, just disrespecting us." Vidal said he and other employees of Big Apple Pizza, located next to a sports bar where the players had been, asked them to leave. "And they started running their mouths," Vidal said. "So we said some things back to them."
Eventually, the players' wives hustled them into an SUV, but the incident wasn't over.
"The dude in the passenger side was hanging out the window saying some real nasty stuff to me," Vidal said, apparently referring to Garcia. "So I gave it right back to him. I wasn't going to let him walk all over me... The driver [Spencer] jumped out the truck and ran at me...I tripped over the curb. I fell down. He jumped on top of me and hit me three times in the side. By then his buddy got out the other side and came and jumped on top of me."
"I don't want to sound like a girl or anything," Vidal continued, "but my pride was taken from me, especially now that I know it was the Mets and it's all over everywhere - New York, here, people I don't know. It's not something that you can be happy about... And these guys think they got away with it. And they probably will."
Vidal said he was interviewed by a Mets representative, who promised the team would stay in touch. But when he read press accounts yesterday that the Mets had closed the matter by internally disciplining the players, Vidal became irate.
Noteworthy
• John Henry Williams, the son of Hall of Famer Ted Williams who pushed to have his father's body frozen, died late Saturday of leukemia in a hospital in Los Angeles, an attorney for Ted Williams' family said. He was 35.
• Commissioner Bud Selig will join a handful of sports officials Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where he will testify before a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on steroids. Also expected to attend are Donald Fehr, head of the baseball players union; NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue; Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL players union; and Terry Madden, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and a critic of baseball's drug-testing program.
• New York Yankees rightfielder Gary Sheffield had an MRI exam on his sore right thumb. He jammed the thumb Saturday.
• Red Sox executive Mike Dee rejected an offer to become president of the Los Angeles Dodgers and will become Boston's chief operating officer.
• Norm Charlton, the veteran relief pitcher who has tried to come back from shoulder injuries the last 2 years, said he is retiring at 41.