Roger Clemens doesn't do a ton of long-form sitdowns, so when he showed up on Pardon My Take this week alongside Shane Bacon for an All-Star week episode, it was a get. The rundown was stacked, Home Run Derby, the World Cup semis, Hot Seat/Cool Throne, but the real headline was Clemens finally going deep on the single most replayed moment of his 24-year career: the night he sent a jagged bat barrel skidding toward Mike Piazza at Yankee Stadium.
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For anyone who needs the refresher, this goes back to Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, the Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets, the first Yankees-Mets World Series meeting since 1956. Piazza's bat shattered on an inside pitch, the barrel spun out toward the mound, and Clemens fielded it and fired it in Piazza's direction as he ran up the first-base line. Benches cleared, words were exchanged, and MLB hit Clemens with a $50,000 fine days later. It's one of those moments that gets replayed every October regardless of who's actually playing.
The tension didn't come out of nowhere either. Earlier that same season, Clemens had drilled Piazza in the head with a fastball, a hit that gave Piazza a concussion and knocked him out of that year's All-Star Game. So by the time October rolled around, every pitch Clemens threw Piazza's way carried baggage, and the bat toss became the flashpoint for a rivalry New York media had already turned into a citywide referendum on toughness.
Roger Clemens breaks down the Mike Piazza incident
On camera, Clemens leans into the defense he's given before, framing it as a heat-of-the-moment reaction rather than a targeted shot, essentially arguing that if he'd actually wanted to hit Piazza, he'd have just eaten the fine and done it outright rather than flinging a piece of broken lumber. Twenty-plus years later it's still the line people argue about in bars, and hearing him lay it out unprompted on a podcast is the kind of thing that gets clipped and argued about all over again.
The interview wasn't just old grudges, though. Clemens also got into the pitcher's side of gamesmanship, explaining how easily hitters can pick up on a pitcher tipping his pitches and what he used to do to keep hitters guessing about what was coming next. It's a small window into how much cat-and-mouse actually goes on between the mound and the plate at the highest level, and coming from a 7-time Cy Young winner it carries real weight.
Roger Clemens tells us how guys tip pitches easily and how he would disguise his tells for which pitch is coming
Between the Piazza breakdown and the pitch-tipping talk, PMT walked away with one of its bigger get-a-legend-to-actually-say-something episodes in a while, timed perfectly with All-Star week when baseball nostalgia is already at its peak. Don't be shocked if the bat-toss clip is still getting quote-tweeted well past this news cycle.