David Wells calls Joe Torre a 'punk' for telling all in 'The Yankee Years'

David Wells, the author of both a perfect game and the literary classic "Perfect I'm Not," is an expert at causing a stir in the Yankees clubhouse with a tell-all tome.

That certainly didn't prevent the hefty lefty from lowering the Boomer Thursday on fellow writer Joe Torre in radio interviews on both coasts.

After first joking on New York's ESPN-1050 that he would "knock out" his former manager the next time he sees him, Wells, who himself was decked by a 5-7 patron of an upper East Side diner in 2002, amended that answer to say he would "just laugh" at Torre over the controversy created by the current Dodger skipper's book, "The Yankee Years."

Later in the day, Wells went on ESPN-710 in Los Angeles and similarly cracked that he would "punch Torre in the face" or "have a friend do it." He also called Torre "a punk" for breaking the sanctity of the clubhouse, a code he always preached as Yankees manager.

"What we do as athletes, that's our problem and our business. And a lot of guys have come out and destroyed that," Wells said on the L.A. station. "That's why they don't have any friends. … People just don't do it, and that's what Joe did.

"When you break the code, you're a punk. If he broke the code, he's a punk, absolutely."

In Wells' book, "Perfect I'm Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball" - released before the 2003 season - he wrote that he pitched his May 1998 perfect game "half-drunk," but later claimed to have been misquoted often in his ghostwritten autobiography.

Wells said Torre informed him then that he was responsible for the contents of the book because his "name was on the cover," and the lefty insisted the Yankees fined him a sum larger than the widely reported $100,000 for writing it.

"Well, it was 165 (thousand). I wish it was 100, but it was somewhere in that range," Wells said on the Michael Kay Show on ESPN-1050. "Joe ran his thing, he called guys out from time to time. But it's just something you do indoors. He says you'll never hear anything from him in the media or in the paper. And that was BS."

In his soon-to-be-released book, co-written with Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, Torre takes swipes at Alex Rodriguez as well as GM Brian Cashman and others in the team's front office over his departure following the 2007 season.

"He's always saying, 'Boomer being Boomer.' Well, this is Joe being Joe," Wells said.

Torre also is quoted as saying, "The difference between Kevin Brown and David Wells is that both make your life miserable, but David Wells meant to."