Boyer of Yankees Charged with Assault and Battery

Apr. 5, 1965 - Clete Boyer of the Yankees posted $200 bond today on a warrant charging him with assault and battery, and a hearing was scheduled for May 11 in Fort Lauderdale Municipal Court.

A similar hearing involving Roger Maris, originally scheduled for tomorrow, was put off until Wednesday to allow time for pleas to be entered.

Boyer and Maris have retained a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, William Leonard, who also represents the Yankee Clipper Hotel, the team’s spring training headquarters for four years.

The Yankee stars were accused in separate warrants by Jerome Modzelewski, a 25-year-old professional model, after a barroom fight last Wednesday. Maris, accompanied by Yankee manager Johnny Keane, posted $200 bond the next night after the police notified the club of the warrant.

The 30-year-old Maris denied he had struck Modzelewski and said, “Anyone who says so in court will be making himself liable to perjury.”Boyer was named in the second warrant Saturday after the Yankees had flown to Puerto Rico for two exhibition games. The 28-year-old third baseman was told of the warrant by a reporter Saturday night and said: “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know the guy.”The incident occurred Wednesday in Nick’s Bar in Fort Lauderdale just before midnight. The Yankees had defeated the Athletics in Bradenton that afternoon and had taken a four-hour ride by bus back to their training headquarters.

Maris, Boyer, and Hal Reniff were sitting in the bar with Joe DiMaggio and a female companion of DiMaggio’s. Modzelewski said he was leaving with his own date when “out of a blue sky” Boyer insulted him. When Modzelewski demanded an apology, he said, Boyer challenged him to fight.

Modzelewski said he walked toward his car and was “jumped” by two men and beaten so that he required 10 stitches in his lip. His first complaint to the police identified no one, but he later said he recognized one of the men as Maris. By Friday night, he said, he found two witnesses who would identify the other man — “the man with the hat” — as Boyer.

The Yankees, from general manager Ralph Houk and Keane on down, professed no concern over the warrants. Keane said no question of team discipline existed. He drove Maris to the police station last Thursday and said he believed Maris’s account of the incident.

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