The Pecan Park Eagle

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: