The Pine Tar Incident
Every athlete is remembered for something in their career, for some it’s record breaking statistics or championships won and for other athletes their careers are defined by a single moment.
For George Brett, he didn’t get to choose the moment that defined his career as most don’t. The Hall Of Famer has over 3,000 hits, an MVP Award and a World Series Ring. Despite his elite career as one of the best left handed hitters in baseball, Brett isn’t defined by any clutch hits or towering home runs.
Rather, George Brett’s career is remembered by the time he was ejected from a game at Yankee Stadium on July 24th, 1983. The Yankees were up on the Royals 4–3 at the top of the 9th inning. With two outs, and one runner on base George Brett came up to the plate. Brett took a Goose Gossage fastball and put it into the right field seats to put the Royals up 5–4 on the Yankees. So it seemed…
The Yankees manager, Billy Martin took a peek at George Brett’s bat and had concern about there being too much pine tar on his bat. So he asked the umpires to investigate. According to the rule, a player is not allowed to have more than eighteen inches of pine tar on the bat and there can not be any pine tar on the barrel of the bat.
After discussing and measuring the pine tar on the bat in comparison to the size of the home plate. The umpires officiating the game upheld George Brett’s home run. Taking away his potential game winning home run. As one can imagine, George Brett was not pleased.
George Brett causes a massive scene on the field resulting in him getting ejected from the game. Even after the home run was upheld, the Royals still came back to win the game 5–4.
George Brett’s bat is held today at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Also in the Hall of Fame is his head plaque after he was indicted into the Hall Of Fame in 1999. Although this isn’t the moment George Brett wanted to be remembered for, he gave us arguably one of the wackiest and most odd stories in baseball history.
