Shortly before spring training began in 1999, when I covered the Yankees for The New York Times, I glanced over the list of non-roster invitees, and one name lurched off the page at me: Jason Grimsley.
A couple of years before, I had written a small story for the Baltimore Sun that Grimsley was the player who had crawled through the bowels of Comiskey Park and pilfered teammate Albert Belle's cork- filled bat from the umpires' dressing room in the midst of the 1994 season. But Grimsley had never acknowledged his participation and the story had never been fully told from a first-person point of view, so after talking with Grimsley a few times early in the spring of '99, I edged into the conversation about the Belle bat, about Feb. 20 or so.
"If you happened to be the guy who allegedly took the bat from the umpires' room," I asked, "and I were to ascertain that the statute of limitations has passed [regarding what] would happen to the person who did this, would you talk about it?"
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Buster Olney
