Rocket Redux (Again?): Roger Clemens Returns

by Christopher McIntosh
06/01/2006

I heard the news last night.

I once heard a quote that went something along the lines of "foul language is the language of the weak and small minded."

This is f*****g ridiculous.

I'll admit it. When it comes to this issue I am small minded and weak, but it's about the only thing I can come up with.

I'm so mad I'm sputtering.

Roger Clemens has come back to baseball. After retiring. Again. He's starting to make Sugar Ray Leonard look positively decisive by comparison.

Because of arbitration issues (and his arrogance) he will only pitch half the season, with his first start slated for June 22nd.

His salary? 22 million dollars and 22 cents. They gave him that amount because his uniform number is 22. With logic like that it's no wonder the Astros are one game over five hundred.

You'll pardon me if I find this disgusting. He'll get roughly 12 million for pitching less than half the season. After taking a page out of the Brett Favre playbook by teasing everyone about whether he would come back, he's finally made the "tough" decision to rejoin the Astros. After flirting with the Yankees and the Red Sox.

If he'd signed with the Red Sox I would have spent the next week in Church ducking the locusts and frogs falling from the sky.

To wit:

"The ball's in my court now," Clemens said Wednesday at a news conference to announce his return. "This was a difficult decision on my part in a number of situations. I have to now take the next step and get my body ready to come back, get effective, win games."

Even with an abbreviated season ahead, Clemens is uncertain how he'll hold up physically.

"I can get into a game situation and my body not respond like I want it to," he said. "I pushed my body hard, but I still need to get some competitive innings, stressful innings.

"I call them stressful innings because, at my age, it's stressful."

A difficult decision to make? Are you kidding me? He gets 12 million dollars for half a season's work. He doesn't have to make road trips when he's not pitching. His fellow Texans will deify him.

I can't stand it. This seems like a clear cut Terrell Owens, Barry Bonds, Randy Moss situation where an athlete figured he was bigger than the game and decided to wield the leverage his extraordinary athletic talents to get exactly what he wanted. I was also jaw astounded when I watched Outside the Lines (sport's version of Nightline) and all three guests summed up their feelings as "well, he's done so much and he's so good, he deserves it."

Again, language aside, I'm at a loss for words.

I don't care how good you are. Has there been a player of his stature in recent memory so blatantly flaunting his elite status? Even Bonds has the decency to sit on the bench when he's not playing and shag flies on occasion.

Clemens apparently has no sense of loyalty. He basically tanked in Boston when they wouldn't give him the contract he wanted. Then he went to the Yankees and intimated during the World Series he was pitching his last game in order to get a standing ovation when he left the field, ironically enough after one of the very few quality starts he ever put up during the playoffs.

Then he had the audacity to publicly flirt with going back the Sox because they were contenders this year. It takes a special kind of arrogance to do that. Almost like putting a reality show on about you while you're being investigated for perjury and have basically been publicly convicted of using steroids.

But no one would be dumb enough to do that.

I hate to sound like Spike Lee, but Clemens body noticeably changed during his later years. His core strength is supposedly unbelievable and field players have joined him for offseason workouts and left midway through to throw up. These are field players. And this is when he was past forty.

Who does that sound like? Has anyone had the intestinal fortitude to even raise this issue? I will. Why aren't we investigating Clemens for steroid usage? Wheres the public outcry and insinuations? Why did he suddenly disappear at the beginning of this year? Why did he play the will he or won't he retirement game while the offseason was filled with uncertainty regarding MLB's upcoming steroid policy.

I'm not sayin'. I'm just sayin'.

Where's the Barry Bond treatment? I know it couldn't be because we hate Barry and he's been a snot with the media. No chance that had anything to do with it.

Probably has nothing to do with race either.

No one is surprised by this turn of events, despite it's singularity. I don't think it's just out of shock or deference to the man's undeniable brilliance. I think there's something else. I just can't quite put my finger on it.

Clemen's actions in baseball have been notoriously selfish. The tanking in Boston. The mercenary switching of teams. The holding out to see if his "hometown team" had a shot at making the playoffs under the guise of seeing if his body could "hold up."

Seemed to hold up pretty darned well during the World Baseball Classic didn't it?

There is no denying that he is one of the great pitchers of our generation. There's also an argument to be made that he might be the best pitcher of all time.

Doesn't mean I have to like him. It also doesn't mean I can't call bull when he makes patently false claims. So you'll excuse me if I don't share in the happiness regarding the Rocket's return.

As much as I dislike Barry Bonds quest for 756 and the media's obsession with steroid allegations, I don't think he's wrong to point out that there may be some racialization of who is and who is not being singled out.

Clemens is referred to as the Rocket, after all. Am I the only one that's wondering what's been fueling that Rocket well past it's shelf life?

Think he doesn't have a high enough opinion of himself to believe that the rules don't apply to him?

I'll leave you with one last fact. Every one of his children's name begins with K.

K. As in the box score notation for strikeout.

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