By Chad Jennings • cjennings@lohud.com • October 21, 2009

ANAHEIM - Even with CC Sabathia pitching on three days' rest. Even with Joe Girardi being questioned for his various pitching decisions in Game 3. Even with the Yankees trying to bounce back from their first loss of the postseason, the pregame chatter at Angel Stadium on Tuesday centered on the most unexpected of topics.

Is Mariano Rivera a cheater?

In the hours before Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, 11 seconds of video caused a buzz on the Internet and made Rivera the subject of a brief investigation by Major League Baseball.

The clip showed Rivera spitting toward the baseball during Monday's Game 3. In the clip - taken from the national broadcast of the game - Rivera is on the mound, holding the baseball near waist level, when he spits a long strand of saliva that appears to either hit the ball or travel to the right of the ball.

The angle of the shot - from Rivera's left and slightly behind him - makes it impossible to say whether Rivera is spitting on the ball or spitting on the ground.

An Angels fan Web site posted the video with the headline, "Mariano Rivera Spitball: Video Evidence?"

"I laughed about the whole thing," Rivera said. "What would I get mad for? I care about what the fans think about me, but if somebody has followed my career for all of those years, I would have to have a lot of spit to spit for a lot of years."

Major League Baseball looked at additional video and still photography and ruled Rivera did not spit on the baseball. Rivera said he was never contacted by the league office.

"If we find a different angle," Rivera said. "You will see that the spit is never on the ball."

While some Angels fans seemed outraged by the so-called controversy, the Angels' manager seemed completely unconcerned.

"This is the first I'm hearing about this," Mike Scioscia said during his pregame press conference. "I didn't even know that there was any indication that it's been looked at. Never. There are certainly some guys that might be suspect, never Mariano with anything that I've heard or been a part of. And I'd be shocked if there was anything to that."

When Rivera agreed to address the video during a brief session with reporters in the Yankees' dugout, he spent more time laughing than anything else. He offered to buy all of the reporters dinner if anyone had a video angle that actually showed him spitting on a baseball.

"I was on the bus on the way here," Rivera said. "My friend called me. He said, ‘Hey, stop cheating.' ‘What are you talking about?' ‘Everybody here is saying you spit on the ball.' ‘What?' But Major League Baseball cleared that. Somebody had nothing better to do, I guess."

There were several red flags that the "evidence" was not concrete.

1. Rivera was holding the ball roughly a foot and a half away from his mouth when he spit. He wasn't exactly keeping the action hidden from view.

2. The pitch Rivera threw immediately after spitting was his usual cutter, a hard-boring pitch that breaks in on left-handed batters. A spitball is designed to slide out of a pitcher's hand, creating irregular movement.

3. Rivera has pitched in more than 900 regular-season games and more than 80 postseason games.

"I kind of laughed," Girardi said. "Mo's been throwing one pitch for a long time. I happened to catch him. He was accused of throwing a spitter. The one thing about a spitter is it consistently does not go one way like Mo's ball consistently goes one way. So I kind of laughed at it.

"MLB has investigated, they have nothing about it. We just move on. To me it's a dead story. I caught Mo for four years and I know for sure he never did anything."

At one point while he was talking to reporters gathered in the Yankees' clubhouse, Rivera had to pause. He had put a piece of gum in his mouth when the interview started and the gum had filled his mouth with juice.

"Excuse me," he said. "I have to spit."

 

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