Roger Clemens won his trial on the government’s charge against him that he lied to Congress about his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs, but Andy Pettitte, his old friend and teammate, got the much needed save.

It won’t show up in Pettitte’s 17-year career record, which includes no saves or save opportunities, but without it, Clemens would very likely not have gained his most vital victory. Pettitte’s role in the United States District Court trial had been expected to be critical but in the reverse way of what it turned out to be.

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The Wikipedia description of the 1949 film “It Happens Every Spring” says “the story of a baseball pitcher is completely fictitious, and the main character King Kelly is not based on or related to the actual player.” Wikipedia needs an update.

There is nothing fictitious about R.A. Dickey or what he has done. He has brought to life King Kelly, a.k.a. a college professor named Vernon K. Simpson, and in his own way he has duplicated Simpson’s accidental discovery of how to make pitched baseballs avoid wood bats.

Unless Dickey is getting away with something everyone has missed, he has not used any substance to make balls miss bats. King Kelly put a substance on the balls, and they jumped over and dived under bats. Dickey achieves that trick with his knuckleball.

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In the first week of June, the Mets embarrassed themselves by putting on sale tickets for up to $50 to a game that had already been played, the first no-hitter in their 51-year history. In the second week of June, the Mets embarrassed themselves by trying to get Major League Baseball to change an official scorer’s call and manufacture the second no-hitter in their history.

Terry Collins, the Mets’ manager, took credit (blame would be more accurate) for the idea of appealing the decision by official scorer Bill Mathews in the first inning of the June 13 game at Tampa Bay. But it turns out that it was suggested to him by Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president for media relations.

The play in question was third baseman David Wright’s fielding of a slow grounder hit by the speedy B.J. Upton.

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