To many, Jose Offerman is the goggled utility man who kicked around the big leagues for 15 seasons before finishing his career with the Mets.
To John Nathans, Offerman is the criminal in denial who ruined his baseball dream and gave him horrible headaches with one lunatic swing of the bat.
Last week, seven years after the incident, Nathans received some sort of vindication – when a Connecticut jury awarded him $940,000 in damages.
“We’re very happy with it,” Nathans told The Boston Globe in his first comments since the decision. “The jury recognized that I suffered life-altering permanent injuries. That’s money that’s going to go to my future treatment.”
Nathans said he still suffers from headaches, nausea and dizziness from postconcussion syndrome.
The incident in question occurred in an independent league game on Aug. 14, 2007, nearly two years after the two-time All-Star Offerman last appeared in the majors. Offerman, then 38 and a member of the Long Island Ducks, was hit by a pitch and charged the mound with bat in hand. Nathans, catching for the Bridgeport Bluefish, ran out to help his pitcher.
What happened next is still disputed. Nathans says Offerman cracked him in the back of the head with the bat, while Offerman claims he never swung it.
“I never swung the bat,” Offerman testified. “I never hit him.”
There is no video of the incident, and instead the jury had to base its decision on photos – like the one above — audio from the radio broadcast and sworn testimony of onlookers.
“He was just in a state of denial, and it was clear to everyone, including the jury,” Nathans said. “He never once acknowledged swinging the bat. Nobody believes that.”
The jury found Offerman, who was arrested after that game, liable for assault but not battery.
“He was happy with the jury’s finding that he didn’t commit a battery but he, too, was confused with the verdict as I was,” Offerman’s lawyer, Frank Riccio II, said.
“If he was found not liable for battery, how could he be liable for damages as a result of physical injury?”
Nathans is now a lawyer himself. He got as far Double-A in the Red Sox system, but regrets the way he was forced out of the game.
“I didn’t get to leave the game on my own terms,” Nathans told the jury in US District Court in Bridgeport. “He took a bat to my head and ended my career.”