The beautiful baseball beef between Mike Piazza and Roger Clemens

Piazza smoked Clemens with his bat (figuratively) and then Clemens tried to smoke Piazza with his bat (literally)

If you know one thing about Mike Piazza’s beef with Roger Clemens, it’s probably the moment in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series when Clemens threw a chunk of Piazza’s broken bat right back at Piazza. That’s definitely the climax of the feud, but it wasn’t an isolated incident.

Clemens vs. Piazza is best understood within a few contexts: First, the surprisingly recent history of the Yankees-Mets rivalry. Second, baseball’s strange, unwritten justice system wherein pitchers sometimes throw right at batters. Above all else, you need to remember the way intention and fate interacted to create that climactic moment in 2000. We saw a flurry of increasingly embarrassing homers, a beanball that led to a concussion, a possibility of “karate,” and a lot of back-and-forths in the media before the bat shattered that night. And after that moment, there’s a lot of unresolved tension between the two baseball legends. It’s pretty awkward.