METS DENY TEAM IS PLAGUED BY MARIJUANA USE

Nine days from the end of an underachieving season, the Mets closed ranks
yesterday in the face of another embarrassing development. After failing in
every way possible to attach on-field success to last winter's highly
touted reshuffling of the roster, the Mets are finishing out the season
responding to allegations of widespread drug use on the team.

Mets General Manager Steve Phillips denied that the team or its minor
league system was plagued by marijuana use. He was responding to an article
in Newsday yesterday that said at least seven players were using marijuana,
and Phillips held up the farm system as a model organization.

Grant Roberts, a pitcher, acknowledged that he was the player shown smoking
marijuana in a photograph that was published with the Newsday article, but
he said the photo was provided by a woman who was extorting him.

"I'm sorry," Roberts said to a roomful of reporters and television cameras
at Shea Stadium. "I'm very embarrassed by the situation. I made a mistake.
The picture that you all saw is from the off-season in 1998. The woman who
gave up the picture has also tried to threaten me and do other things, to
get me to do stuff and give her things. And obviously I did not. Again, I'm
sorry and I apologize to the New York Mets organization and to their fans.
I love and respect this game a lot and I'm going to continue to play and I
look forward to putting this behind me and moving on."

The charge of extortion was supported by a Mets official and a person close
to Roberts. Major League Baseball, which was notified about the situation a
month ago, is investigating the incident.

Kevin Hallinan, baseball's senior vice president for security and
facilities, declined comment but will look into the Newsday report, which
did not mention the extortion accusation.

The developments made for a bizarre scene at Shea, where team officials
departed from their usual policy and closed the clubhouse and adjacent
hallway to news media representatives for nearly two hours.

When it was opened, reporters swarmed around players and team officials. At
one point, Manager Bobby Valentine, trying to illustrate the potential
dangers of playing under the influence of drugs, struck a pose as a
disoriented hitter swinging an imaginary bat. The day ended with the Mets
losing to the Montreal Expos, 6-1.

The Mets said they had no knowledge of marijuana use beyond Roberts and two
others - Tony Tarasco and Mark Corey - who were identified earlier in the
season as having used the illegal drug. The players expressed anger that
the Roberts photo was printed when they believed it to be an act of extortion.

Corey, traded with Jay Payton on July 31 to the Rockies, suffered a seizure
June 26 and later admitted to a reporter that he had been smoking marijuana
before the attack. He had been riding in Tarasco's car to a nearby hotel
after a game at Shea, and Tarasco told the authorities at the scene that he
had been smoking marijuana as well.

Both are in Major League Baseball's drug program as first-time offenders.
Tarasco remains with the Mets, although an injury may keep him from playing
again this season.

Mets players rebutted other allegations in the story: that one player
smoked marijuana regularly in the parking lot, that marijuana has been
mailed into Shea Stadium inside a peanut butter jar to mask the smell, and
that a number of Mets share limousine rides on the road rather than ride
the team bus so they can smoke marijuana.

"I don't think it's a problem, I really don't," catcher Mike Piazza said in
response to the questions raised by the Newsday article. "Then again, I'm
just not convinced it is a widespread thing. Some guys have been kind of
brought out and they have to face up to that." According to Seth Levinson,
Roberts's agent, the woman contacted the pitcher about two months ago and
said she wanted to get together with him. She called another time or two.
Each time he rebuffed her. Then, about a month and a half ago, Levinson
said, she began threatening him. She said that unless he gave her a
specified amount of money, she would give newspapers a photograph of him
smoking marijuana. He refused.

Jason Isringhausen, a Cardinals pitcher, said in a telephone interview from
St. Louis that when he was with the Mets the same woman sent him flowers
"everywhere I started; and she sent me a ring."

"She had some kind of fixation on me," he said. He also said she was once
kicked out of Shea. Isringhausen said she never tried to extort money from
him and added, "She never did anything bad toward me." John Franco, the
team captain and veteran relief pitcher, addressed the allegations of drug
use by saying: "I haven't seen nothing to make me think anything like that
is going on. To implicate, to say there's four other players, to me I'm
disgusted with it. I have family and friends who live here in the city and,
like me, young kids read the papers and go to other kids, `Hey, the Mets
are drug addicts.' It's making us all look like we have a problem."

Pointing to baseball's minor league drug policy, Phillips stressed that
Mets players in the minors are tested up to seven times a year by organized
baseball and by the team. Baseball's testing is random, Phillips said, and
he rebutted a contention by a person in the Newsday article that star
prospects were warned in advance of the random testing.

"I've been in the front office since 1990 and have been aware of every drug
test since then," Phillips said. "There has never, never, been any evidence
of rampant or significant drug use in the New York Mets organization in the
minor league system."

Players on the 40-man roster - the 25 on the major league team and 15
others from the minor leagues - are exempt from testing. Players testing
positive in the minor leagues enter the Mets' employee assistance program.

"We know what's going on in our minor league system," Phillips said. "We
know because we test. I've been involved in the testing and the
implementation of the employee assistance program. I will hold our
organization up, both for our educational program and our comprehensive
testing program and our employee assistance program, against any
organization. And in the past M.L.B. has shared with us that we have among
the fewest positive tests that they get through their testing as well."

Valentine backtracked over comments attributed to him by Newsday, in which
he said he had voiced concerns about drug use to Phillips as far back as
spring training. Valentine said yesterday that he had spoken to Phillips
after the Corey incident. Valentine also addressed the Mets the day after
Corey's seizure, and said players told him that the incident should have
scared everyone into staying away from drugs.

"The Mark Corey situation brought it to light, that guys are still smoking
marijuana and playing baseball," Valentine said. "I remember them doing it
20 years ago and I thought it was a thing of the past. I was a little
naive, I guess. When the Mark Corey thing came up, I did ask around, had
some little flags pop up, I talked to Steve about that and I addressed the
team."

That is when Valentine feigned lunging at a pitch with an imaginary bat.
The scene drew a stern look from Phillips and laughs from reporters and,
when replayed on television in the Mets' clubhouse, from players. "It's not
a thing you would do to try to stand up there and dodge a 95-mile-an-hour
fastball," Valentine said.

Valentine also denied speaking to Roberts about smoking marijuana, and said
that confronting someone about drug abuse is difficult.

While maintaining they were unaware of any other marijuana use in the
clubhouse, Mets players sounded sympathetic toward Roberts.

"You're vulnerable and you think somebody is a friend one minute and the
next they're trying to extort something from you," Franco said. "He's a
young kid that made a mistake. We've all made mistakes."

The latest incident added to a year of disappointments for the
organization. It began during the off-season when Phillips assembled a $95
million roster and imported stars like Mo Vaughn and Roberto Alomar to join
Piazza and Al Leiter. The season looked promising, but it has been marked
by losses and intrigue.

Piazza felt obligated to affirm his heterosexuality in an on-field news
conference in Philadelphia after a New York Post column alluded to a Mets
star being gay. Alomar, struggling through his worst season since his
rookie year, and Roger Cedeno, another import, had a dugout shoving match
before a game. Valentine suffered a public meltdown after the final game of
a 12-game losing streak, denying an allegation that he was trying to get
fired. And last week Keith Hernandez, a former Met and current broadcaster,
apologized to players for writing in an Internet column that they had quit.

"It's a bad year because we've gotten away from what we're here to do, to
play baseball," Franco said. "All this other extra circus stuff just ruins
everything. I feel offended because this implicated four players that are
Mets and not saying which four makes us all seem like pot heads and drug
addicts."