Manager in hot water after talk at U.

N.Y. Mets skipper Bobby Valentine made some controversial remarks at a talk at Penn last week. His remarks were then posted on the Web. A casual afternoon talk with Penn students on the business of baseball last Wednesday turned into a potentially job-threatening nightmare for New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine over the weekend. By Friday morning -- after one of the students at the talk posted some of the controversial manager's comments on the Mets' World Wide Web site -- Valentine was smeared all over the back pages of the New York tabloids. Students at the talk spent the weekend answering calls from reporters seeking to confirm the Web account of the talk and to track down rumors about the existence of a video of the event. Once the remarks became public, Valentine made several attempts to pressure campus media outlets not to release audio or video footage of the event. UTV-13 President and General Manager Eric Gordon, confirming the existence of a video, said yesterday that the student-run television station taped the event. Though he would not say whether UTV-13 has possession of the video, he said that Wharton Wide World of Sports, which sponsored the talk, had told him they wanted the tape. "At first they were concerned with what we were doing with the tape," said Gordon, a College junior. Then, Gordon said, the group requested that any copies of the tape be given to them. The Wharton club declined to comment last night. On Friday, Valentine directly contacted the Daily Pennsylvanian reporter who covered the talk and asked that her audio tape not be released. According to that tape, Valentine was critical of several past and present Mets players -- including outfielders Rickey Henderson and Derek Bell, and former Met Bobby Bonilla -- as well as of the team's management. Valentine sprinkled his potentially inflammatory statements with remarks like, "I'm willing to handle all those questions as long as this isn't going to be seen on 20/20." In the audio tape, Valentine is heard saying that Bonilla "found something, and he lost something" this year after being signed by the Atlanta Braves. "He found his stroke, and he lost 45 pounds. That makes a big difference," Valentine said. "To lose 45 pounds, there has to be a commitment, and there seems to be a commitment this year, interestingly enough, because he's without a contract this year." Valentine was also critical of his team's failure to sign Japanese reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki over the winter. Sasaki signed with the Seattle Mariners. "I was a proponent during the offseason to say, 'Let's boost our bullpen,'" Valentine said. "I thought that if we can sign this kid Sasaki, who's a free agent, it would have cost us no talent, just a little money, and we would have one heck of a baseball team right now?. But the group who makes the decisions decides that wasn't a good idea." Valentine did not directly speak against Bell, acquired by the Mets over the winter, although several in attendance at the talk felt that Bell was the $5 million player the Mets manager alluded to when speaking of young outfielder Benny Agbayani. "Benny's in that situation where some would say if he was given 600 at-bats, he would have a lot more production than someone else that's making $5 million and getting 600 at-bats," Valentine said. Valentine was also not directly critical of Henderson, as the student who posted to the Mets' Web site originally asserted. Several in attendance agreed that Valentine's comments about Henderson were in jest. According to notes of the DP reporter who covered Valentine's talk, when asked how he deals with a player such as Henderson, the Mets manager gave a tongue-in-cheek response. "I don't," Valentine said, according to the notes. "I just ignore him as much as I can. Seriously, the personality of Rickey? it's the same personality that we all have, probably that he's always had?. I try not to change his personality but to get him to play as hard as he can every day he goes out there." Valentine, who had earlier praised some of his ballplayers for being "worldly in their ventures," is heard on the tape relating a story about Henderson. Valentine was reading The Wall Street Journal on the team bus when Henderson boarded. "[Henderson] said, 'Hey, Bobby, what are you reading?' I said, 'The Wall Street Journal.' And he said, 'You mind if I look at the sports page when you finish?'" Valentine said, provoking laughter from the audience. "Worldly, he's worldly." Valentine also spoke of stadium plans for the Mets and the New York Yankees. Prefacing his statements with, "This would get me in a lot of trouble with my owner," Valentine advocated "one building for two teams." "I don't think there's any way the City of New York and the public [are] going to co-venture two buildings in excess of a billion dollars each for these rich kids that run around with baseballs and rich owners that make a lot of money," Valentine said. The DP's audio tape did not record the entire speech, and the consensus of several students there was that many of Valentine's remarks were in jest. Some of the tabloid reports, they say, were taken out of context. After initial reports of the event surfaced on Thursday, Mets General Manager Steve Phillips -- with whom Valentine has a famously contentious relationship -- made an unscheduled trip to Pittsburgh to discuss the event with Valentine. Though Valentine's job has been anything but secure for months, the Mets said over the weekend that the remarks made at Wharton were not a fireable offense. "Steve and Bobby have talked," Mets spokesman Jay Horowitz said last night. "Steve has heard Bobby's side and what happened or didn't happen, and we're prepared at this time to close the door and move on." Valentine could not be reached for comment last night. "Brad34," the student who posted the comments on the Mets' Web site, said in an e-mail last night that he regrets his postings. "Believe me, I never had the intention of creating such a stir," the student said. "I just wanted to share some of my interpretations with some lunatics on a baseball board. This has just gotten way out of hand, and every party involved has certainly been adversely affected."