- 2 days ago
Hey everybody! It's Jon again. In the second episode of my new series "The History of Charging the Mound," we examine a 2001 bout between Mike Sweeney and Jeff Weaver. As you'll see, this is among the most unexpected and bizarre mound-chargings on record. Strap in for passive-aggressiveness, a sensational takedown, some solid ground-and-pound combat, a disgraceful cheap shot, and eventual crying.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00On August 10th, 2001, in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City's Mike Sweeney charges the mound to fight Detroit's Jeff Weaver.
00:15That'll be our main event today, but we've also got a few quick undercard bouts that ought to set things
00:19up nicely.
00:20They're going to help us examine the difference between throwing at a batter on purpose and throwing at a batter
00:25by accident,
00:25as well as the question of whether or not that matters.
00:28Let's now pull up our Constellation map and navigate to what I have titled the Ramirez-Clemens-Weaver System.
00:34The careers of the players involved span from outfielder John Shelby's first season in 1981 to fellow outfielder Manny Ramirez's
00:41final season in 2011.
00:43I had to double-deck the Clemens career in this Constellation to make it clear that Clemens and Sweeney, whose
00:48careers overlap here, did not fight.
00:50In 1991, Shelby's final season, he charged the mound to fight Roger Clemens, who was halfway through his third of
00:56seven Cy Young award-winning seasons.
00:58On July 6th, in the top of the second, Clemens gave up back-to-back homers against Detroit.
01:03He'd enjoyed such off-the-chart success that he'd never really had to build much tolerance for failing.
01:07So when the next batter, John Shelby, steps into the box, Clemens chucks an obviously intentional beanball right between the
01:13letters and numbers.
01:14When Shelby charges, he takes his bat with him.
01:17A categorical no-no that could send things sideways really quickly, thankfully catcher John Marzano chases him down and executes
01:23a brilliant takedown.
01:24Clemens was charged again 12 years later in 2003 by Manny Ramirez.
01:29Let's save that one for its own episode, because that is the Don Zimmer one.
01:33A few years prior, Manny charged one of the stars of today's show, Jeff Weaver, whose journey here requires some
01:39prologue.
01:39On April 23rd, 1999, Cleveland's Jarrett Wright is having a pretty crappy bottom of the fifth.
01:44He just gave up a lead-off homer, then a walk, then a single, and has decided to take it
01:48out on the next guy up, Boston's Darren Lewis.
01:51Why am I so convinced this is intentional?
01:53Well, when Lewis runs at him, he gleefully flips away his glove, which is always something you look for,
01:57and gives a bring-it-on gesture before getting knocked down by Lewis's beautifully graceless kick-punch combo thing.
02:04Even the winner, if there is one, usually looks pretty dumb in these fights.
02:07Anyway, after they're separated, Wright yells at Lewis,
02:09Yeah, I threw at your head. Not much room for confusion there.
02:13About a month later, during another tough inning, Wright hits another batter, this time Detroit's Tony Clark.
02:18This is not intentional. Clark says as much, and there are a couple of tells anyway.
02:23For one, the count was 0-2. If he was going to throw at him, he already would have.
02:26For another, his body language is totally different this time around.
02:29Wright shakes his head and looks pretty apologetic.
02:31But to the Tigers, intent doesn't matter so much when their guy is exhibiting concussion-like symptoms.
02:36Somebody's got to pay for this.
02:38When Weaver takes the mound in the bottom half of the inning, he nails the first batter he sees, Manny
02:42Ramirez, in retaliation.
02:44For the record, Weaver only states that he didn't mean to hit him in the head.
02:48Not that he didn't mean to hit him.
02:49Manny is intercepted before he can get to Weaver,
02:51but if you're wondering whether the Tigers are still salty over Wright's initial beanball,
02:55take a look at Detroit's Larry Parrish, who works his way over to Wright and throws him to the ground.
02:59It is important to note here that Parrish is the Tigers' manager.
03:03So we have established that Weaver, like Wright, is capable of throwing a beanball egregious enough to invite physical assault.
03:09But as we move on to our main event, those of you familiar with Royal Slugger Mike Sweeney are probably
03:14a little surprised to see him tangled up in one of these.
03:17Sweeney's reputation as the nicest guy in baseball precedes him.
03:29It's a reputation he comes by, honestly.
03:31He does do all the standard nice guy stuff, staying late to sign autographs, showing up for charity events, helping
03:36out in the community, and to a degree above and beyond his peers.
03:39But simply calling him nice feels like selling him a little bit short.
03:43Sweeney, I'm convinced, is a genuine and kind-hearted man whose deep faith in God compels him to treat others
03:48in a Christ-like manner.
03:49He rushes to the defense of that which needs defending.
03:52Or, at least, that which he thinks needs defending.
03:56That applies to this fight, yeah, it applies to some other things, too.
04:00If you didn't pay any attention at all to baseball in 2006, Mike Sweeney might still have been in your
04:05orbit if you'd been following the stem cell research debate.
04:08The battle lines were drawn in Missouri, with senatorial candidate Claire McCaskill enlisting the help of actor Michael J. Fox
04:14to cut an ad in support of the research.
04:16Fox had been diagnosed with Parkinson's, one of many diseases that might be treated or even outright cured with breakthroughs
04:22resulting from stem cell research.
04:23In response, the anti-stem cell research group Missourians Against Human Cloning hastily expedited production on an ad they ran
04:31during the World Series.
04:32I would describe the production style of the commercial you're about to see as a cross between Wi-Fi router
04:37setup tutorial and hostage video.
04:39Several notable figures from Catholic and evangelical circles lent their services, and the copy written up for them was so
04:45disjointed, confusing, and lacking in context that they may as well have been speaking in Aramaic.
04:50Which, actor Jim Caviezel literally did.
04:53Labara nash with nashak.
04:55That's how the ad starts. That's it.
04:57And then it just cuts to Cardinals pitcher Jeff Supan.
05:00You also see Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as Kurt Warner.
05:04Californians agreed to spend $6 billion on the exact same science.
05:08Now they admit there won't be any cures for at least 15 years.
05:11I don't know what to tell you, Kurt. Sometimes difficult things take a long time.
05:14To put it in football terms for you, there was once a Hall of Fame quarterback who didn't make his
05:18first NFL start until he was 28.
05:20And then, there's Mike Sweeney.
05:22It's important to note that this is the entirety of his appearance.
05:2625 women have died, and 6,000 have complained of complications.
05:31Missouri, don't be fooled.
05:33Neither Sweeney nor his co-stars elaborate on that claim in the least.
05:36You can't just be like, people died, and then not explain who or where or why or how.
05:42I tried my best to track down the source of this claim, I scoured old newspapers, I looked through the
05:47group's old website, but I came up empty.
05:49I do believe that Sweeney believes that the line they wrote for him is true, and now we're back to
05:54the question of whether intent matters, aren't we?
05:56This is part of a pattern of Sweeney briefly shedding his nice guy image to come to the defense of
06:01causes that, if you ask me, did not warrant his defense.
06:04In 2010, while playing for the Mariners, his teammate Ken Griffey Jr. was reported to have taken a nap in
06:09the clubhouse in the middle of a game.
06:11Sweeney passionately defended his teammate, a laudable instinct.
06:15Longtime viewers may recall that around this time, things were tough for Griffey.
06:19He couldn't sleep well at night, he was thousands of miles from his family, he missed them dearly.
06:23Thing is though, Sweeney took the extraordinary step of challenging any other Mariner who might have leaked this story to
06:30fight him.
06:30If there was no truth to this story, Jr. certainly would have denied it.
06:34But he did not deny it, and he has not to this day.
06:41Sweeney was also steadfastly loyal to the Kansas City Royals, and I say this as a lifelong on-again, off
06:46-again, fair-weather Royals fan.
06:48The Royals organization did not deserve that loyalty.
06:51This chart illustrates the number of games ahead or behind the Royals were in their division after every single game
06:57from 1985 when they won their first World Series championship to 2015 when they won their second.
07:02Since those two titles were 30 years apart, and there were 30 teams in baseball throughout most of that period,
07:07you could argue that this wait was exactly as long as it should have been.
07:11And that as far as titles are concerned, there's nothing to complain about.
07:14And I mean, it's a race. A race usually only has one leader, so the other four to six are
07:18likely to be behind most of the time.
07:20These Royals, though, appeared to turn around and run the wrong way every year, scared off by every starting gun.
07:26Winning the division was rarely a realistic possibility.
07:29In fact, more than 10% of these games were played when they were so far back in the standings
07:34that winning the division was a mathematical impossibility.
07:37That's 515 games.
07:39You can subtract a few of those to account for times they were still mathematically alive in wildcard races, but
07:45still, that's several hundred games that did not matter.
07:48That were essentially reduced to baseball practice on account of how much losing they'd already done.
07:53This is a trend you might expect a sports team to endure for three seasons if things really go south.
07:58Not three decades.
07:59The root of this problem is pretty easy to identify.
08:02Cheap ownership.
08:04It's a tried and true playbook.
08:05You wail all day about playing in a relatively small market and you slash payroll while silently making money hand
08:11over fist through revenue sharing and TV deals.
08:14Walmart CEO David Glass became the Royals' CEO in 1993, bought the team outright in 2000 for $96 million, and
08:21sold it in 2019 for around $1 billion.
08:25Throughout these years, free agent signings were limited to once big names who were well past their primes.
08:30Whenever their farm system did develop a star like Johnny Damon or Carlos Beltran, they were allowed to walk in
08:35free agency.
08:36They very nearly traded Mike Sweeney prior to the 1999 season before he even had a chance to establish himself
08:42as a star.
08:43Upon learning such a trade was imminent, most guys in his position would probably be happy to jump ship to
08:47a team that had a non-zero chance at contention.
08:54The Royals did not ultimately trade Mike Sweeney, who immediately developed into the face of the franchise and became a
09:00five-time all-star.
09:01He was that very rare class of hitter who could sock dingers while also maintaining a batting average well over
09:06300 year after year.
09:08As such, he was a very good player, playing for derelict teams built by cheapskate ownership.
09:13They didn't deserve him.
09:14But the other guys in the clubhouse did deserve the leadership he offered.
09:18And the deprived fanbase did deserve at least one guy, one mainstay and standard bearer they could pull for year
09:24after year.
09:24And in that sense, this loyalty did make sense for Sweeney, even if it wasn't deserved.
09:29Players in all team sports hop franchises constantly in pursuit of that elusive title without ever getting one.
09:34Rather than obsessing over what you can't really control, why not drop anchor where you're at, make a solid chunk
09:40of money, and become a local legend?
09:41Sweeney often liked to use the metaphor of the tandem bicycle, in which he let God steer in the front
09:47seat and committed himself to sitting back and pedaling.
09:50That's certainly what he did throughout this 13-year tenure in Kansas City.
09:53That's what he wanted out of this, and that's what he got.
10:03We now return to August 10th, 2001.
10:06It makes almost too much sense that Weaver would try to hit Sweeney with a pitch here.
10:10For starters, the Royals and Tigers are division rivals.
10:13How much of a factor does that play in these affairs?
10:15I built Figure 2 to try to find out.
10:18I had suspected that mount chargings would be more frequent among division rivals.
10:22Halfway through crunching this data, I realized that I was mostly wrong about that,
10:26and this chart was not going to prove the point I wanted it to prove.
10:29And then I just finished making it anyway, because I thought it was neat.
10:32This, of course, is not how the divisions have always been aligned, but it does still bottle up the most
10:37intense rivalries into the same divisions.
10:39Here we can see that Tampa Bay and Boston have been involved in one mount charging, Toronto and Boston.
10:44Also one, the Red Sox have tangled in two apiece with the Yankees and Orioles, so those two bars are
10:49taller.
10:50The Yankees' ties to the Orioles and Blue Jays are higher still, because they've conducted three mount chargings apiece.
10:55The Tampa Bay Rays weren't founded until 1998, just when the frequency of mount chargings was set to level off,
11:01so they've never had the chance to mix it up with Baltimore, Toronto, or the Yankees.
11:05Most of the rest of the divisions look similar.
11:07Of those you see here, the only four-time mount charging duo is Mets-Braves, not that surprising if you
11:12know their history.
11:13But the interdivisional factor is far more muted than I would have thought.
11:16I never would have guessed, for example, that the Brewers have never once tangled with three of their four current
11:21division rivals,
11:22despite moving to the NL Central 25-plus years ago.
11:24All in all, a team isn't more likely to fight a division rival than any other team.
11:29These rivalries don't seem to count for a lot when it comes to mount charging.
11:33Unless you're in the Royals and Tigers division, the American League Central.
11:41All three of baseball's most frequent dance partners live inside this division.
11:45Detroit-Chicago, Detroit-Cleveland, and Cleveland-Kansas City.
11:49I don't know why.
11:50Midwestern rage?
11:51Not really.
11:52The NL Central has the tamest showing here.
11:54I do think there's more than standard deviation at play here, though.
11:57Certain franchises are just more irritated with each other than others.
12:00And in particular, Mike Sweeney's Royals and Jeff Weaver's Tigers share a fair amount of madness with the fight we're
12:05about to see contributing to four total mound chargings.
12:08Since division rivals play each other more often, Sweeney and Weaver have seen a lot of each other.
12:13Sweeney's taken the other hand, going 10-for-27 with two homers off Weaver entering this play appearance.
12:18Weaver's probably sick of seeing him by now, making an intentional beating a little bit more believable.
12:23And I repeat myself, but it would almost make too much sense when you look at this.
12:27The year prior, not only did Weaver lead the league in batter's hit, but Sweeney led the league in most
12:33times, hit by a pitch.
12:34But Sweeney's a man of God.
12:36A model citizen of Boy Scout.
12:38A man whose mere appearance in this historical record is frankly shocking.
12:42What sort of infernal beanball must Weaver have thrown to elicit a violent response from this modern-day saint?
12:48Well, Jeff Weaver did not intentionally hit Mike Sweeney with a pitch.
12:54Weaver did not hit him with a pitch, period.
12:57In fact, Weaver did not even throw a pitch.
13:00Across this entire sample of 264 mound chargings, this is the only one I've found in which the batter charged
13:07the pitcher before the plate appearance had even officially begun.
13:15Rosin bags, as far as I can figure, seem to have first appeared on Major League Baseball diamonds in the
13:201910s.
13:21It's illegal for pitchers to use foreign substances to doctor a baseball, but it was decided a long time ago
13:25that the pitcher at least has the right to keep his hands dry,
13:28so he's permitted to keep one on the mound and dust his hands with it.
13:31Just enough rosin leaks through the bag to do the trick.
13:33The rosin bag is generally expected to sit somewhere far back on the mound, so it doesn't visually distract the
13:39batter or interfere with a batted ball.
13:40As Weaver gets ready to pitch to Sweeney, it's closer to the top of the mound.
13:45Sweeney has just asked plate umpire Mike Fichter to ask Weaver to move the bag.
13:49Weaver says,
13:53A plausible claim, since in the pre-COVID days they just threw one out there for every pitcher to share.
13:58Royals pitcher Paul Byrd might well have left it there in the top of the inning.
14:02Fichter seems to say,
14:05I'd like to stop here for just a second and divulge that I find the experience
14:10of re-litigating a quarter-century-old disagreement concerning a bag lying on the ground to be debasing and embarrassing.
14:16Why are we arguing?
14:18Who cares?
14:19If you're Weaver, why not just move the bag anyway?
14:22I don't know.
14:23Maybe, over the course of the dozens of times they've faced each other in the past,
14:27Sweeney and Weaver have developed a sort of unspoken annoyance toward each other.
14:30That's believable.
14:31Maybe Sweeney, well aware of Weaver's history of throwing at guys, sees him as a punk.
14:35Maybe Weaver sees Sweeney as a sanctimonious holy roller.
14:38Here you can see Weaver barks something at Sweeney, which Sweeney will later recall to be
14:42U-F-ing-F-U.
14:44Sweeney takes a couple of halting steps toward Weaver.
14:47Fichter says, oh no you don't.
14:48Sweeney says, oh yes I do and we are in business.
14:52But, later statements will indicate that it's not his own honor Sweeney is trying to defend.
14:57He'll say that he doesn't want to charge the mound, but that he has to.
15:00Because, through some apparent combination of using foul language and refusing to move a bag,
15:07Weaver has failed to respect the game of baseball.
15:14Sweeney, throughout his career, took up sword and shield in defense of victims of stem cell research
15:18who appeared not to exist, his willfully skin-flint, malt-o-meal baseball organization,
15:23a sleepy Ken Griffey Jr. who wasn't even interested in defending himself,
15:27and now, the sport of baseball itself.
15:29An ancient and unkillable pastime that has weathered every last storm and does not require defending.
15:35Now Weaver, whose back is still turned and who does not know Sweeney is coming, does require defending.
15:40And he does have a friend in his catcher, Robert Fick.
15:43Months ago, these two did receive some on-the-job training for dealing with an unruly guest.
15:48Steve Wilkos, who in this time runs security for the Jerry Springer show that tapes in Chicago,
15:53is a big baseball fan.
15:54He routinely reserves tickets for visiting players, as he did for Weaver and Fick in May.
15:59When they got there, though, Wilkos explained that he was dealing with a bad back and he deputized
16:03them as fill-in security agents.
16:05Weaver and Fick spent the day wrangling various people on stage and preventing them from tearing
16:09each other's faces off. It sounds like they had a good time. But none of those people were Mike Sweeney.
16:17So here's an observation that I think might enrich your enjoyment of every mound charging,
16:22and in particular this one. This is all 100% improvised on the fly.
16:27The vast majority of guys who charge the mound have never done so before at any level of the sport,
16:32and it happens so rarely that they've never even seen anybody else do it.
16:35They operate purely on instant. Some go for a tackle, some swing their arms like windmills,
16:40some try to open with a flying kick, some forget to do anything at all.
16:44And a fair number begin their attack with the handiest of ranged weapons, their helmet.
16:49I've seen quite a few guys press the R1 button, but David Justice is the only charger I've seen
16:54who actually hit the bullseye, popping Troy Percival right in the dome.
16:58The genius of this maneuver lies in how poetically justified it is.
17:02How are you gonna be mad that he threw at you? You threw at him.
17:05Since Weaver didn't actually throw a pitch, of course, Sweeney lacks this justification.
17:08He misses wide left. A backpedaling Weaver clearly wants no part of this,
17:12but he realizes he needs to square up and brace for impact at some point.
17:16And it's only now when an additional Tigers teammate finally appears in frame, shortstop Davy Cruz.
17:22Reinforcements typically arrive a lot sooner than this.
17:25But even with Weaver stalling for time, there's no one to stop Sweeney from throwing him to the ground
17:29and getting a couple of blows in. And Weaver will later claim that that is no accident.
17:38This was the last full season Jeff Weaver spent in Detroit. After he was traded the following year,
17:43people talked about it as though it were just a matter of time. The multiple dust-ups he was involved
17:48in, including this one, didn't really help matters, but it seems mostly like a clash of personalities.
17:53Weaver had been described as prickly and overly intense in a way that young starting pitchers
17:57can sometimes be as they enter the top echelon of one of the most frustrating lines of work
18:01in existence. He had his friends in the clubhouse, like Fick and Bobby Higginson,
18:06who were despondent over losing him. But even a year before Weaver was traded,
18:09his own manager, Phil Garner, openly daydreamed about dealing him away.
18:13Years later, former teammate Todd Jones went out of his way to knock the guy.
18:17It seems you either loved Jeff Weaver or you couldn't stand him, depending on who you were.
18:21Days after the fight, Weaver wistfully rattled off the names of the few teammates
18:25who did rush in to back him up as he wondered why no one else did.
18:29It's no mystery to his manager, who's glad more of his guys didn't jump in, citing last year's
18:34Tigers White Sox Donnybrook that registers a hard five according to my grading system.
18:39Nine Tigers were suspended after that one, enough to ruin a manager's life for the next week.
18:43People used to have a very different view of these things. In fact, Garner's legendary predecessor did.
18:49Sparky Anderson, who managed the Tigers in the 80s and 90s, didn't just allow his players to clear
18:53the benches whenever a fight broke out. He demanded it. He wanted all his guys jumping the rail and
18:58rushing the field, even the guys in the bullpen. Even if players got injured or suspended, the chance
19:03to build team solidarity was worth it to him. Weaver probably would have appreciated a manager like
19:07that. In Sparky's time, though, there were enough fights to commemorate every phase of the moon.
19:12In 2001, Weaver finds himself at the beginning of the end of whatever strange phenomenon this has been.
19:19The unspoken, unwritten rules of this thing, the rules that compel you to back up your teammate
19:24no matter what he did, no matter whether you liked him personally, are being left in the past.
19:28It's worth remembering that the first batter who charged Weaver back in 1999, Manny Ramirez,
19:33did so because he thought Weaver intentionally hit him, which I'm convinced he did in order to
19:37retaliate against one of his teammates being hit. He did that in just his eighth career start.
19:42Even as a rookie, he upheld this code of honor. He was willing to do that for his teammates. But
19:48a couple years later, he finds that they have failed to do the same for him.
19:52I guess you find out a lot of things when a fight breaks out, he said.
19:58Robert Fick, as steadfast a friend as ever, rushes in to try to pull Sweeney off Weaver.
20:03After he's swallowed up into the blob of surrounding players, he seems hellbent on tracking down Sweeney,
20:08and eventually does. Fick does get Sweeney to the ground, but is then wrangled by royal starter Paul
20:13Byrd. So Fick is now engaged with another fighter, but Sweeney still sneaks in a blow to the head.
20:19Careful there. You already got what you came for when you took down Weaver. Fick only came to you to
20:23defend his guy, and now he's wrapped up and on the mat. Show's over. If you keep swinging on him
20:28in this
20:29defenseless position, that is a cheap shot. That makes you a punk. And yet, Sweeney steadies himself
20:35on Byrd's shoulder, winds up, and rocks him in the head with a hard right. But you know,
20:39sometimes when you choose violence, you only injure yourself. Usually figuratively, this time
20:44literally. Sweeney sprains his wrist as a result of this punch, and will miss several games because
20:49of it. Fick will be fine. Sweeney then seems to look for somebody else to hit before teammate Carlos
20:54Feblis finally pulls him away. Mike Sweeney, shirt torn apart, gasping for air. Looks like a man who
21:00just finished either speaking in tongues or following the teachings of someone who did.
21:04Before this moment, Sweeney was a devout Catholic. A moment from now, he will be again.
21:08Whichever religion he belongs to in this particular moment is anyone's guess.
21:18Mike Sweeney was suspended 10 games for his role in this one, one of the harsher penalties on record for
21:23charging the mound. Robert Fick received an eight game suspension. Almost as many coaches as players
21:28were penalized in the wake of this rhubarb, which represented one final charge into battle for many
21:32mound-charging veterans. As players, Bill Madlock had once charged a mound, and Al Nipper had been
21:37charged. Juan Samuel once played a key supporting role in one, as well as Ed Ott, who, uh, let's just
21:44say
21:44Ed Ott deserves his own episode of this series. Jeff Weaver and a few others were fined. According to my
21:50grading system, this one registers a four out of five on the pitcher-charger scale because Sweeney
21:55scored a hard takedown and landed blows on multiple opponents. It gets a three out of five,
21:59also known as a rhubarb, on the surrounding fight scale because those who cleared the benches
22:04actually did some of their own fighting. Despite being hit with such a long suspension and suffering
22:09a fairly embarrassing injury, Sweeney was the one who came out of this smelling like roses, at least in
22:13baseball circles. In the days that followed, Weaver was betrayed upon learning that his own
22:18teammates supported Sweeney charging at him and taking him down. A couple fellow Tigers pulled
22:23him aside and told him he was wrong to shoot off his mouth at him in the first place. Other
22:26teammates
22:27anonymously leaked to reporters that they were not happy with him. And while Mike Sweeney would continue
22:31to enjoy many more seasons as the royal superhero, this was the point of no return that led to Weaver
22:36getting shipped out of Detroit. Weaver clearly lost this one in every way. And after the game,
22:41he offered what might have seemed in the moment like sour grapes.
22:44He's the one that's got to sit there at home tonight and think about what he did.
22:50But he was right. This is going to stick with Sweeney. A week later in the letters to the editor
22:54page of the Kansas City Star, the hot button issues of the day, fittingly, are stem cell research and
22:59Mike Sweeney. One teacher is unhappy with Sweeney, a role model in the community setting a bad example
23:04for his students. Another letter writer calls him a thug and a fake Christian. He's not. I don't know Mike
23:11Sweeney. I've never met him. But a childhood of going to church helps you spot the fakes from a
23:16mile off. And I think Sweeney is the real deal. Whenever a follower of Christ has a decidedly
23:20un-Christ-like moment like this, people like to make sport of calling them hypocrites. And
23:25sometimes they very much are. But I think Sweeney would be the first to tell you that the idea
23:30is to try one's best to imitate Christ with the knowledge that you are guaranteed to fall short.
23:35He's human. Failings are inevitable. And Sweeney never claimed otherwise.
23:40As time went on, Sweeney felt worse and worse about what he did. He was a father. He imagined
23:46the inevitable day his kids would see the tape and ask him why he did it. And he wanted to
23:50be able to
23:50tell him he at least tried to make things right. So nearly five years later, Sweeney sucked it up,
23:56called Jeff Weaver on the phone, and apologized to him. Now, Weaver's recollection of this call,
24:01and Mike's recollection of it, are totally consistent factually, and they offer no
24:05conflicting details. They are nonetheless very, very different. First, the incredibly brief
24:10Gospel of Jeff. Uh, yeah, he called me. He was pretty messed up about it. I totally forgot any
24:17other shit ever happened. But yeah, that's cool. Whatever. And now, the Gospel of Mike,
24:23found within a DVD released in 2007 featuring Sweeney and many other ballplayers, titled Champions of Faith.
24:30Five years would pass without a single word being said between the two. Sweeney wanted to reconcile
24:38with Weaver, and so he picked up the phone. And I couldn't press that send button. So I got on
24:46my
24:46knees on the side of the bed, and I said, Lord, humble me. Jeff, I come to you, and I
24:52just want to ask that
24:53you would forgive me. And Jeff, uh, it was kind. That fight had Mike Sweeney down so bad that he
25:05was
25:05choking back tears about it five years later. Now, you can laugh. I did. What we just saw is a
25:11deliriously maudlin and overwrought retelling of what's gotta be one of the goofiest baseball moments
25:16to happen that entire season. One in which the batter was upset about a bag on the ground. He
25:21asked the ump to tell the pitcher to move the bag. The pitcher told the ump, no, I don't feel
25:26like it,
25:26then called the batter a F-F-F-U.
25:29The batter charged the mound out of a stated conviction to defend the honor of baseball
25:33itself. And then this selfless paladin, this noble keeper of the flame, snuck in a series of cowardly
25:39cheap shots against another dude who was on the ground and pinned by somebody else. And then he
25:43injured himself instead of the guy he was trying to cheap shot. That is so funny. That is what they
25:49wheeled out the soft focus and sparse piano for. He did it again. Just as Sweeney repeatedly came to
25:56the defense of that which did not need defending, he created ceremony out of an apology that wasn't
26:00necessary to a guy who forgot it even happened. But he nonetheless displayed the humility and the
26:06conviction to own up to it, surely aware that wise asses like me might laugh at him. That is not
26:11common,
26:12and that is something that I think he deserves some respect for.
26:19Jeff Weaver, who was only 24 years old that evening, matured considerably as his career went on,
26:24and looked back on the incident as something only a younger version of himself would have done.
26:28After his trade to the Yankees, he bounced around the National League before wrapping up a solid
26:3311-season career. In 2006, he was traded mid-season to the playoff-bound Cardinals,
26:38who took a 3-1 World Series lead over the Tigers. Despite Weaver's early-season struggles,
26:44the Cards gave him the ball in Game 5 to lock it down against his former team.
26:48He pitched the game of his life, giving up just four hits and one earned run across
26:51eight innings to sew up the series title.
26:58Mike Sweeney never had a prayer of reaching the playoffs, let alone the World Series,
27:02as long as he was wearing a Kansas City Royals uniform. He finished his career with stops in
27:07Oakland, Seattle, and finally Philadelphia, where he was used mostly as a pinch hitter.
27:11In Game 2 of the NLDS, the Phillies called in Sweeney to pinch hit. This was his first ever
27:17postseason at bat. It was also his 5,189th and final major league at bat. Sweeney looped a single
27:25into left center. He was stranded on first. The Phillies didn't use him the rest of the postseason.
27:29They were bounced in the next round. And at season's end, Mike Sweeney, retired.
Comments