Overview

• On August 9 at Yankee Stadium, Clemens made his first Old-Timers’ Day exhibition appearance since 2019, during which he faced four batters.
• Questions resurfaced about the first inning of Game 2 of the 2000 World Series when he fielded and threw Mike Piazza’s broken bat toward the plate.
• Clemens renewed his longstanding defense that he never meant to hit Piazza and that he believed the bat shard was a baseball.
• Former manager Joe Torre backed Clemens’s account, arguing Piazza had been running to first base unaware the ball was foul.
• Clemens’s Yankees return reignited debate over his career legacy, including his seven Cy Young Awards and his denial of performance-enhancing drug use since the 2007 Mitchell Report.