the fact that we got this smile from him is also making me tear up like I can count on one hand the number of times bo bichette has genuinely smiled like that on the baseball field and I don't even need all five fingers
april 26th, 2026 | cleveland guardians @ toronto blue jays
Hazel Mae: "As [Ernie Clement] showed us later on, he used Anthony Santander's bat in that plate appearance. Clement, who regularly uses different bats, told me he did it because Santander has left a lot of hits in that bat. 'There are hits and homers,' he said, 'still in that bat for me.'"
Dan Shulman: "I have never met a hitter who will use as many different bats with as little science behind it as Ernie Clement. [...] He'll go rummaging around in lockers or back rooms or storage closets or whatever. He'll pick up a bat and he'll say to you, with as straight a face as you can imagine, 'There's hits in this bat. I can feel it.'"
Caleb Joseph: "He is tune with the lumber he brings to the plate. [...] Every time you go out for a major league game, you bring a couple bats and put them in your bat rack. You might have two. Ernie's bat rack [...] has got about six or seven bats in there. He's constantly rotating them."
Dan Shulman: "When Hazel and I were talking to him this morning, I said, 'Ernie, I don't wanna bug you too much about the bat thing, but you showed the bat to the camera yesterday. He goes, 'Oh, you guys saw that?' I go, 'Well yeah, Ernie, everybody saw it. You showed the bat right to the camera yesterday, so you're the one who got this going.' [...] It's not like the Myles Straw bat and the Spencer Horwitz bat and the Brice Turang bat and the Anthony Santander bat. They're not all the same length. They're not all the same weight. Clement will go up there, not really caring about the length and weight or weight distribution of the bat, as long as he thinks or feels that there are 'hits in this bat.'"
Caleb Joseph: "Which is crazy to me, because when you start messing with length-weight ratio and the construction of the bat, you can have a smaller handle with a bigger barrel or a thicker handle with a smaller barrel. It really does mess with the timing of how that bat runs through the zone, and he just doesn't care. It's very abnormal, but as we know, he finds ways to get abnormal hits with obviously an abnormal process in getting there. He can go back and find bats from 4-5 years ago back in the storage room. He's an absolute beauty. One of a kind."