Roger Clemens, his white wool Philadelphia A's uniform almost gray from perspiration, goes into a windmill windup that went out of style before he was born. As one of modern baseball's most overpowering pitchers releases, a sound technician for "Cobb," the film biography of the Hall of Famer, mutters, "Does Tommy Lee have insurance?" Actor-comic Robert Wuhl, playing the wise-cracking sportswriter Al Stump, doesn't miss a beat. "Don't worry," Wuhl says. "He won't hit it."

But Tommy Lee Jones, dressed in the dark-gray, pre-World War I Detroit Tigers road uniform of Ty Cobb, delights, the gathering by getting good wood on the ball and slapping it between short and third. Jones looks momentarily surprised that he has connected and ignores the applause of the film crew and spectators. He steps back into the batter's box and snarls something to Clemens about the gender apparel that a pitcher who throws like him should be clothed in. Clemens, a good four inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than the bull-necked, square shoul-dered Jones, sneers something about the men from Cobb's hometown o Royston, Ga., and their fondness for sheep.

Jones glares. Clemens delivers, and Jones, swinging out of Cobb's famous fists-apart bat grip, connects again and sends a liner back to the mound. An audible gasp goes up from the spectators, but Clemens reaches out nonchalantly and snares the ball, only to see it slip out of his glove and spill onto the mound. "Geeez," Clemens says, "this thing is just two slabs of leather stitched together. How'd they catch anything in those days?"

"A lot of the time they didn't," says Ron Shelton, the movie's director. "That's one reason why everyone hit .390 in the old days. You have to be careful; one guy tried to catch a ball up around his eyes. He tried to use the webbing."

"What happened?" Clemens asks.

"He found out there wasn't any webbing," Shelton replies. "He got 11 stitches."

"Shouldn't we get him a real glove?" Wuhl says. "What if Tommy Lee really catches hold of one and hits it back to the mound?"

"Then," says Shelton, in reference to the fireballing pitcher of the 1950s whose career was snuffed out by a fine drive to the head, "We're shooting the Herb Score story."