On October 22, 2000, Roger Clemens threw a broken baseball bat as hard as he could at Mike Piazza during a World Series game. Even now, 25 years later, those words seem surreal. But it’s true, it happened, in front of the entire baseball world … and nothing happened to Clemens. He wasn’t tossed from the game (he pitched eight shutout innings). He wasn’t even warned. He was later fined $50,000, which he probably found sitting in an old pair of jeans and that was the end of it.
Well, actually, not the end because, famously, Clemens had a justification for his actions. An amazing justification. A justification that has echoed through the years.
He thought the bat was the ball.
Even now, this is so galactically stupid that it’s hard to know where to begin. I mean, let’s grant that in the heat of the moment, Clemens, a grown man who had been playing baseball all his life, might have mistaken a jagged baseball bat for the ball. Let’s just give him that one. Why did he then throw the “ball” at Piazza? How does saying it’s the ball in any way change the basic issue, which is that Roger Clemens threw an object at Mike Piazza as hard as he could?
I wouldn’t be writing about any of this today except for this.
Clemens is apparently STILL saying it. And his manager, Joe Torre, is joining in.
Saturday, Clemens pitched in the Yankees’ old-timers’ day. And when he walked in to talk to the press, Torre leaped in to clear the air before there was even a question.
“There’s still a question with the broken bat, with Piazza and the whole thing in Game 2,” Torre said. “I think if Mike knew that the ball was foul, he wouldn’t have been starting to run to first base. The ball went over the first base dugout, was foul right away. He didn’t know where it was, so he started running.”
WHAT THE HECK IS JOE TORRE BLATHERING ABOUT?
“I didn’t know he was running, and Mike said that same thing too,” Clemens said. “He didn’t know where the baseball was. So my first instinct when I shattered that bat in about four pieces, I thought it was a baseball coming at me.”
DID THIS MAKE SENSE IN CLEMENS’S HEAD BEFORE HE SAID IT OUT LOUD?
IS THERE ANYTHING TRUE LEFT IN THE WORLD?
Just so we can keep our sanity, here’s what happened: Roger Clemens threw a hot fastball. Piazza dribbled it into foul ground and shattered his bat. The ball rolled into the first base dugout, and the fat part of the bat hopped up on Clemens. Piazza did lose sight of the ball for an instant and did start running toward first. But, almost immediately, he saw the ball roll into the first base dugout, and he slowed to a crawl — a good thing because if he had kept running, Clemens very well might have hit him with the bat or ball or whatever it is that Clemens thought he had.
Oh, by the way: Clemens was looking RIGHT AT PIAZZA when he threw the bat. Right at him. He knew exactly what he was doing. Stop gaslighting us. It’s been 25 years. Let it go, fellas. You threw a bat at Mike Piazza during the World Series and got away with it. Move on with your lives.
📓 This is Joe’s Notebook.
Half-formed thoughts, instant reactions, and nonsense (usually baseball) in real time.
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