Roger Clemens won his 7th and final Cy Young Award, and his only one as a National Leaguer, as a starting pitcher for the 2004 Houston Astros.
A friend told me yesterday that tickets for the Roger Clemens “one-time-only-for-fun” pitching appearance for the Sugar Land Skeeters this coming Saturday night are already going for upwards of $200-300 each over the Internet on Stub-Hub.
So what. That’s how the law of supply and demand works. If people didn’t want to be there as eyewitnesses to a little baseball history, the inflation on the price of admission wouldn’t exist.
But it does.
His fans want to see what he can still do at age 50. A few of his critics want to watch him take a whacking from a bunch of raw kids and sad has beens, Others are hoping to see Roger Clemens have the kind of game that will convince him to try a real come back and go for those 20 extra big league wins that would propel him up to undivided third place on the all time list for career MLB wins as the first man in history to win that many games beyond the half century age mark. AT age 50, Clemens now sits in 9th place with 354 career MLB wins, just one game behind Greg Maddux nd 19 games back of the HOF great tied for 3rd place, Christy Mathewson and Grover Alexander.
Others, like AP writer Paul Newberry writes off Roger’s decision to pitch again as just another boorish display of ego, at best, or something more sinister, he considers that it may be part of a plan by Clemens to pitch again and get his consideration for the Hall of Fame pushed back five more years and separated from all the steroid-era suspects who are up on the HOF ballots for the first time this year, with Clemens, for consideration by voters. Newberry said as much yesterday in an Internet article entitled as “Column: Please, Rocket, just go away – for good.”
I say, Relax. Let Roger have his fun. Have some fun in celebration with him, if you like. This guy still loves the game and loves to play – and at an age when many folks are just lucky to still be moving at all. He’s our inspiration for playfulness in the wake of legal pressures that could have wrecked the physical health of many people who might have been forced by circumstance to go through what he endured legally for years.
The man was found innocent of perjury charges that he lied to Congress. Shouldn’t that be enough to free Roger Clemens from our condemnation as just another steroids user who successfully covered up his real behavior with a successful legal defense? Unless I’ve “misremembered” how our system works, when charged with a crime, we are supposedly innocent under our system of justice until proven guilty – and once found innocent, we are exonerated from further punishment beyond the anxiety, energy, and money we already have expended to prove our case.
Roger Clemens won his legal vindication. And we each have the right to join with him, or not, in the fun he now wants to have in Sugar Land. I think my choice is clear. I’m on the side of having fun with Roger on this one – as well as any further pitching he chooses to do.
I just won’t pay $300 to watch him pitch for anybody. Unless they decide to put this special Skeeters game on TV Saturday night, I will just have to watch for a game report on the ten o’clock news with almost everyone else who even cares.
Closing Note: Here’s a list of the Top Ten MLB Career Wins Pitchers, along with their vivtory totals:
| 1 | Cy Young† | 511 |
| 2 | Walter Johnson† | 417 |
| 3 | Pete Alexander† | 373 |
| Christy Mathewson† | 373 | |
| 5 | Pud Galvin† | 365 |
| 6 | Warren Spahn† | 363 |
| 7 | Kid Nichols† | 361 |
| 8 | Greg Maddux | 355 |
| 9 | Roger Clemens | 354 |
| 10 | Tim Keefe† | 342 |
The Pecan Park Eagle 
August 23, 2012 at 1:07 pm |
Great article..hear hear! Neil
August 23, 2012 at 3:14 pm |
If Clemens pitches for the Astros, it’s a win-win. A pitcher that doesn’t want to be on this winter’s Hall of Fame ballot gets to postpone the clock until there’s been more concensus on PED users like Barry Bonds.
A team that has trouble attracting an audience will probably double their live gate the day Roger pitches, even for an inning. Somebody would need to be sacrificed off the 40-man but, if it’s done in September, they don’t even need to take anyone off the 25-man roster.
And it isn’t like the Astros are debasing themselves by doing this any more than they’ve already debased themselves this season with the lineup they are putting on the field. Heck, half those kids will probably want Roger’s autograph.
I say “Go for it.”
August 23, 2012 at 3:42 pm |
I’m not sure why Roger Clemens return to baseball bothers me so much, but it does. Given all the hoopla we’ve seen in the newspaper the last three days, Clemens and his handlers certainly have measured the demands of the marketplace correctly. When his exploits in a slow-pitch softball league can make the front page of the sports section, you know this is big news.
If Roger truly is “one, fun and done,” so be it, but this appears to be the beginning of a fairly sophisticated public relations campaign which could wind up with Clemens pitching for the Astros before the end of the season. Houston’s big league club certainly could use a veteran in the clubhouse, a quality starting pitcher on the mound, and a sellout at the box office which the Rocket’s appearance at Minute Maid would surely assure.
That’s all “good business,” at least as far as Roger Clemens and Astros owner Jim Crane are concerned.
But is it good FOR the business of baseball?
Keep in mind, that Clemens was exonerated in court of lying, not for the use of performance-enhancing drugs. When it comes to the latter issue, I stand firmly behind Andy Pettitte’s “misrememberances.”
It’s difficult not to lump Clemens in with another Texas athletic legend: Lance Armstrong. After Armstrong won the second of his Tour de France titles, Greg LeMond, the only other American to win the race, questioned Armstrong’s legitimacy as a champion. I always thought that was a little strange. Armstrong has never steered too far clear of the cheating allegations against him. Even now, it seems the vultures are circling ever closer to him and his reputation. Still, he has the best legal representation money can buy, and so does Clemens. And just as Armstrong had the irritation of LeMond, who should have been an ally and not an adversary, so, too did Clemens have to answer to the sworn testimony of his friend and former teammate Andy Pettitte in the Mitchell Report.
Pettitte stepped up and did, seemingly, the right thing by telling federal investigators the truth about his own wrongdoing regarding human growth harmon–regardless of the personal cost to his own reputation, career and baseball friendships. More recently, of course, all that paled in a court of law where the best legal representation money could buy Roger Clemens seemed to have Pettitte singing a slightly different tune.
I’ll stick with Pettitte’s original unadulterated take on the Clemens matter, before he became a little “Rusty” on the witness stand. I also still think LeMond may have been a lot closer to the truth than most people wanted to believe regarding Armstrong.
In the end, of course, it doesn’t really matter. This is sport, mere entertainment for most of us. It’s nothing so serious as politics where every person who throws his or her hat in the ring is committed to truth, justice, and the American way. Seems though that money might matter there, too.
Clemens never failed a drug test, but neither did Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds. McGwire is back in baseball and doing an outstanding job as hitting coach with the Cardinals. I’m good with that. Barry Bonds reputation is so sullied even he realizes the further he stays out of the spotlight the better, although he probably will be watching this new chapter in Clemens life unfold with more than a passing amount of interest.
In the end, I guess what’s good for Roger Clemens doesn’t have to be good for baseball as a whole. After all, last year’s National League Most Valuable Player Ryan Braun got off from being labeled a cheat thanks to a technicality. By the same token, Clemens deserves every chance to again ply his chosen trade.
I won’t wish Roger ill in his return, to whatever extent that return might turn out to be. I do sort of hope it will wind up being a cautionary tale of some kind and will matter in a way which right now we can’t really imagine.
Surely there’s a lesson to be learned here other than the value of the best legal and promotional representation money can buy.
When you have the money to buy it.
August 23, 2012 at 6:07 pm |
I think it’s a brilliant move for the Skeeters and Roger! He’s showing his love for baseball and giving true fans a great moment in baseball history! Love Roger and I love your Blog! Thanks!
August 24, 2012 at 1:54 am |
I understand ESPN Classic is going to be airing the game.