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Clemens, Roger
Date of birth:
Aug. 4, 1962
Profession:
Baseball players; Athletes; Sports people
Biography from Current
Biography (2003) Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights
reserved.
Much of baseball comes
down to numbers, and in the case of Roger Clemens, the numbers point
to his being the greatest pitcher of the modern era. Clemens is a
six-time Cy Young Award winner; a two-time "Triple Crown"
winner, or league leader in wins, strikeouts, and earned-run average
(ERA); a two-time World Series champion; and the league leader in
games won for four seasons, in strikeouts for five seasons, and in ERA
for six seasons. He has thrown 200 or more strikeouts per year in 10
seasons, and he holds the American League record for consecutive games
won, with 20. His 20 strikeouts in one 1986 game set a major-league
record, which he matched a decade later. Clemens's
90-plus-mile-an-hour fastball, uncanny control of numerous other
pitches, fiercely competitive nature, and intense conditioning have
for 20 seasons made him one of the most dreaded pitchers in the major
leagues. Clemens spent 13 seasons with the Boston Red Sox before
signing with the Toronto Blue Jays and then, in late 1998, with the
New York Yankees. "Roger's the last of a dying breed," his
current manager, Joe Torre of the Yankees, told the Associated Press
(April 25, 2003). "He's always thinking of the next
challenge." Clemens met two momentous challenges on June 13,
2003, when he earned both his 300th career win and his 4,000th
strikeout. Those accomplishments, capping his 20 stellar seasons in
professional baseball, have helped secure his reputation as one of the
game's all-time greatest pitchers.
William Roger Clemens, the
youngest of the five children of Bill and Bess (Wright) Clemens, was
born on August 4, 1962 in Dayton, Ohio, and later lived in Vandalia,
Ohio, until his early teens. When he was three and a half months old,
his mother left his father. She later remarried; Roger's stepfather,
Woody Booher, whom he considered his real father, died when the boy
was nine. Bess and Woody Booher had one child, a daughter named
Bonnie. Despite the instability in his family life, Roger Clemens has
maintained that he had a happy childhood. "I feel as if I was
almost spoiled, because I can't ever remember wanting for anything
except possibly a father in the stands watching me pitch," he
recalled in his autobiography, Rocket Man (1987). "My stepfather
was so wonderful to the whole family, my mother was such a stabilizing
force for my entire life, and my brother Randy watched out for me so
well that that want was never a setback of any kind." Ten years
older than Roger, Randy became a father figure for him following his
stepfather's death. An outstanding high-school and college basketball
player, Randy later had tryouts with two National Basketball
Association teams. "I tried to do everything he did and I think
that helped me," Roger Clemens recalled to Ben Brown and Mike
Hurd, as quoted in USA Weekend (August 29-31, 1986).
The death of Roger
Clemens's stepfather forced his mother to work extra hours to support
the family, leaving Roger to be raised principally by his grandmother,
Myrtle Lee. "She always said, 'I made you a man when you were a
boy,'" Clemens explained to Joe Donnelly for Newsday (May 22,
1988). "I think I developed my arm picking grapes off her vine
and throwing them at cars." Roger's mother later reminisced about
seeing her son pitch in a Little League game at age nine. "He
struck out the side on nine pitches, and the catcher's glove made a
popping noise. That's when I thought we had something special in the
family."
During 1976 Roger Clemens
moved back and forth between Vandalia and Houston, Texas, where his
brothers, Randy and Rick, were then living. In 1977 he moved with his
mother to Sugar Land, near Houston, and attended Dulles High School
during his sophomore year, compiling a 12-1 record as a pitcher for
the varsity baseball team. His brother Randy decided that the schools
against which Dulles competed in baseball were not strong enough to
give a true reading of Roger's talent; as a result Roger transferred
in his junior year to Spring Woods High School, where he faced tougher
competition. Already six feet two inches tall and weighing 205 pounds,
the 16-year-old Clemens compiled a record of 6-0 as a junior and set a
new school mark by striking out 17 batters in a game. As a senior
Clemens attained a 13-5 record and improved on his earlier achievement
with an 18-strikeout game.
Charlie Maiorana, the
Spring Woods baseball coach, was a stern disciplinarian who instilled
in Clemens a devotion to conditioning that has remained with him
throughout his professional career. Maiorana told David Whitford for
Sport (June 1985) that before he sent Clemens to Robert Boston, the
owner of the New Breed Clinic, in Houston, he "was just a big,
overweight kid" who "had trouble bending over to field
ground balls." Placed on a new regimen, Clemens frequently jogged
the two miles from the high school to his house after baseball
practice with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. When not playing
baseball, he regularly visited the Houston Astrodome, where he studied
the pitching style of his hero, Nolan Ryan, the great pitcher for the
Astros. "He threw hard--put fear into batters--and I wanted to be
just like him," Clemens told Joe Giuliotti for the Sporting News
(July 28, 1986).
Clemens also played
defensive end on the Spring Woods football team. At the end of his
senior football season, he received combination baseball-football
scholarship offers from North Texas State University, Northeast
Louisiana University, and the University of Georgia--all of which he
rejected in the hope of getting a full baseball scholarship from a
school with a highly regarded program in that sport. But scouts from
those schools were not impressed by Clemens's mediocre,
86-mile-per-hour fastball. After rejecting an offer from the Minnesota
Twins, which carried a bonus of only $1,500, Clemens enrolled at San
Jacinto Junior College, in Texas.
During his year at San
Jacinto, Clemens was in the midst of a growth spurt that brought him
to six feet four inches. With the help of the San Jacinto baseball
coach, Wayne Graham, Clemens's fastball jumped from 86 to 90 miles per
hour. "He chewed me out a few times for bad pitches, and he could
really chew people out," Clemens recalled of Graham in Rocket
Man. "But he taught me a lot about pitching." By the end of
the season at San Jacinto, Clemens had compiled a 9-2 record and was
"blowing the ball by hitters," he said in his autobiography.
He and his brother Randy decided that he should move on to the next
level of competition. After considering scholarship offers from
several large institutions, Clemens accepted an offer from the
University of Texas. Before agreeing to enroll, he considered--and
rejected--offers from the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets
that would have enabled him to turn professional.
In 1982, his first year at
the University of Texas, Clemens posted a 15-2 record but lost the
final game of the College World Series to the University of Miami,
2-1. (Both Miami runs were unearned.) The next year Clemens compiled a
record of 13-5 and beat the University of Alabama in the deciding game
of the College World Series, 4-3. The baseball free-agent draft was
held while the series was in progress, and Clemens was selected in the
first round by the Boston Red Sox, becoming the 19th player to be
drafted. Clemens probably would have been selected earlier, but
reports that he had a "tired" arm prompted several teams to
pass him up. The Red Sox sent a scout, Joe Morgan, who later became
the team's manager, to investigate. "The kid was throwing
bullets," Morgan told Joe Giuliotti. "I told the
organization to forget all the talk of a tired arm and grab him if he
was available."
Clemens signed with the
Red Sox for a bonus of $121,000 and was assigned to Boston's A-level
farm team at Winter Haven, Florida, in the Florida State League.
There, he compiled a record of 3-1, with a 1.24 earned-run average
(ERA), 36 strikeouts, and no walks, before being promoted to the
AA-level team at New Britain, Connecticut, in the Eastern League. At
New Britain Clemens had a 4-1 record and a 1.38 ERA. In the league
play-offs, he gave up just one earned run in 17 innings and pitched a
three-hit shutout in the championship game.
The Red Sox invited
Clemens to their spring training camp in 1984, but sent him to the AAA
team at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the International League, before
the start of the season. After compiling a mediocre 2-3 record and a
1.93 ERA in six starts at Pawtucket, Clemens was called up to the Red
Sox on May 11, 1984. He made his first start four days later in
Cleveland, giving up five runs in less than six innings but escaping
with a no-decision in a game that the Red Sox eventually lost. Clemens
earned his first big-league win in his next start, against Minnesota.
He pitched seven innings, allowed four runs, and struck out seven in a
5-4 win. The right-hander pitched his first major-league shutout on
July 26, 1984, against the Chicago White Sox, striking out 11 batters.
Clemens then pitched a stellar game on August 21 against the Kansas
City Royals, striking out 15 and issuing no walks and becoming only
the fourth pitcher in major-league history to do so. Next, Clemens
threw a three-hitter against Cleveland to bring his record up to 9-4
and clinch the American League Pitcher of the Month Award for August.
In his next start, however, Clemens strained a tendon in his right
forearm and had to be removed from the game. He missed the remainder
of the 1984 season.
Clemens had a difficult
season in 1985. It started out positively in spring training, as the
new Red Sox pitching coach, Bill Fischer, taught Clemens and several
other Boston pitchers to throw a new kind of fastball, gripped across
the seams. The grip causes the ball to pick up more underspin in its
flight and to rise as it comes across the plate. Clemens's
96-mile-per-hour, "exploding" cross-seam fastball was to
become his staple pitch and a devastating strikeout weapon, but in
1985 it was of little benefit since, once again, a physical ailment
shortened his season. After a 3-5 start, Clemens shut out Cleveland on
May 17 in what he thought was the beginning of a turnaround. He
started to feel pain in his right shoulder after the Cleveland
victory, however, and pitched in only five more games for the rest of
the season, the last one on August 11. On August 30, 1985 Clemens had
arthroscopic surgery to remove cartilage fragments from around the
rotator cuff area in his right shoulder.
What was to become a
storybook 1986 season for Roger Clemens began with victories over
Chicago, Kansas City, and Detroit. Then, on April 29, only eight
months after his shoulder surgery, Clemens established a place for
himself in the major-league record book by striking out 20 Seattle
Mariners at Fenway Park in Boston. He also tied an American League
record by striking out eight consecutive batters in the fourth, fifth,
and sixth innings, and he struck out every Seattle hitter at least
once. Astoundingly, he did not issue a single walk. The Red Sox
manager, John McNamara, who had previously witnessed perfect games by
Jim "Catfish" Hunter of the Oakland Athletics and Mike Witt
of the California Angels, said after the game, as quoted in the
Sporting News (May 12, 1986), "I've never seen a pitching
performance as awesome as that, and I don't think you will again in
the history of baseball." Ironically, Clemens was in danger of
losing the game until Dwight Evans hit a three-run homer in the bottom
of the seventh inning to wipe out a 1-0 Seattle lead and secure a
final score of 3-1 in favor of Boston.
The 20-strikeout game was
the highlight of Clemens's 1986 season and the feat that vaulted him
to stardom. His first 14 wins brought him to within one of tying the
American League record for consecutive victories at the start of a
season. Designated to start the All-Star Game for the American League,
Clemens was voted the game's Most Valuable Player for pitching three
perfect innings. He finished that season with a 24-4 record, an ERA of
2.48, and 238 strikeouts. His victory total was the highest by a Red
Sox pitcher since Mel Parnell garnered 25 in 1949, and his strikeout
tally was the third-highest in club history. Fourteen of Roger
Clemens's 24 victories followed Red Sox losses. Thanks in large
measure to that statistic, the Red Sox never lost more than four games
in a row all season and coasted to the Eastern Division title.
Clemens's outstanding performance earned him unanimous selection as
the winner of the American League's Cy Young Award, only the third
player to be unanimously chosen for that honor. He was also named the
league's Most Valuable Player. As Mike Lupica wrote in the New York
Daily News (November 20, 1986), "In a baseball season of so many
heroes, he was the best hero."
In the 1986 American
League championship series against the California Angels, Clemens
scored 1-1 in three starts. He was tagged with the loss in the first
game of the series, giving up 10 hits and eight runs in seven innings.
Pitching after three days of rest instead of his customary four,
Clemens took a 3-0 lead into the ninth inning of the fourth game but
was removed after surrendering a home run and two singles. The Angels
ultimately tied the game and won it in the 11th inning to take a
three-games-to-one lead in the series. The Red Sox won the next two
games to tie the series and sent Clemens to the mound in the deciding
seventh game. Although he was just recovering from the flu and once
again had only three days' rest, Clemens pitched seven strong innings,
giving up just four hits and one run, as the Red Sox won 8-1 to
capture the pennant. Clemens was so weak after the game that he could
not even stand up long enough to celebrate with his teammates or to
give interviews to the press.
The Red Sox faced the New
York Mets in the 1986 World Series. After Boston won the first game,
Clemens faced the Mets' ace pitcher, Dwight Gooden, in a
much-anticipated matchup in the second game. In spite of the pregame
buildup, however, neither of the outstanding young pitchers performed
up to par. Gooden gave up six runs and took the loss, and Clemens was
taken out of the game by McNamara with one out in the fifth inning and
the Red Sox leading 6-2. Boston ultimately won the game, 9-3, to take
a 2-0 lead in games, but Clemens could not be credited with the win
because he had failed to pitch the necessary five innings.
The Mets took the next two
games to tie the series. Boston won the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead
and set the stage for the suspenseful sixth game, which the Mets won
in a dramatic comeback. Largely forgotten in the excitement over the
cliffhanger ending was Clemens's outstanding pitching performance. He
threw a no-hit game for four innings and gave up only four hits and
one earned run before being removed for a pinch hitter in the top of
the eighth, with the Red Sox ahead, 3-2. McNamara decided to have
another player pinch hit for Clemens because the pitcher had developed
a blister on one of the fingers of his pitching hand. The Mets scored
a run in the bottom of the eighth off relief pitcher Calvin Schiraldi
to tie the game. Neither team scored in the ninth, but Boston pushed
across two runs in the top of the 10th to take a 5-3 lead. Then, with
two outs and the bases empty in the bottom half, New York staged an
astonishing three-run rally to win the game and tie the series.
Clemens hoped for a chance to pitch in the seventh game, but with the
score tied 3-3 in the seventh, McNamara passed over Clemens in favor
of Schiraldi. The Mets scored three runs off the Boston relief pitcher
to take a 6-3 lead and went on to win the game, 8-5, and the series,
4-3. "I think the only thing I really look back on with
regret," Clemens said of the 1986 World Series in Rocket Man,
"is that I didn't pitch in the seventh game. I was ready to
pitch."
In addition to the
disappointment that he felt over the Red Sox's failure to win the
World Series, Clemens's 1986-87 off-season was marred by a bitter
salary dispute with the Boston general manager, Lou Gorman. Clemens
had received $220,000 in 1986, plus an additional $120,000 in bonuses.
He sought either a one-year contract for $1 million or a $2.4 million
two-year agreement that would bring him $1 million in 1987 and $1.4
million in 1988. The Red Sox offered Clemens a one-year contract worth
$500,000 and the opportunity to make an extra $475,000 in bonus money.
After reporting to spring training without a contract, Clemens left
camp on March 6, 1987, vowing not to return until the Red Sox met his
demands. For a time, it appeared as though Clemens would sit out the
season. The walkout ended on April 4, after baseball commissioner
Peter Ueberroth intervened and brought the two sides together. The
terms of the two-year contract were not disclosed at the time, but it
was later revealed that Clemens would receive $500,000 in 1987 and
$1.2 million in 1988, plus incentives.
Although Clemens had
continued to train during his contract walkout, the lack of a true
spring training took its toll in the early weeks of the 1987 season.
On June 12, the Boston hurler found himself with a record of 4-6 and
an ERA of 3.51. He then staged a remarkable turnaround, scoring 16-3
with an ERA of 2.66 for the rest of the season. He thus finished at
20-9, with a 2.97 ERA. His 18 complete games and seven shutouts topped
the major leagues. But despite Clemens's heroic performance, the Red
Sox fell out of the pennant race early in the year and never
contended. On November 11, 1987 it was announced that Clemens had once
again captured the American League Cy Young Award.
In 1988 Clemens pitched
superbly through the end of July, then went into a slump. After
defeating Milwaukee, 3-2, on July 30, he had a record of 15-5 and led
the league with 232 strikeouts, seven shutouts, and 11 complete games.
Clemens then lost four decisions in a row for the first time in his
career, while battling a strained muscle in his back. The injury also
caused him to miss a scheduled start for the first time since 1985. On
September 16, 1988 Clemens scored the first one-hitter of his career,
as the Red Sox defeated the Cleveland Indians, 6-0. Clemens finished
the season with a record of 18-12 and an ERA of 2.93. He led the
American League in strikeouts with 291 and shutouts with eight, as the
Red Sox staged a furious comeback in the second half of the season to
win their second Eastern Division title in three years, before being
ousted in four straight games by the Athletics in the league
championship series. Clemens started the second game of the series,
giving up six hits and three runs, while striking out eight, in seven
innings.
The 1989 season was a
strange one for the Red Sox's ace pitcher. Clemens began the season in
fine form but went into a slump that lasted through the middle of the
season, posting an exceedingly high 4.00 ERA and winning only seven
games out of 15 decisions. The latter half of the season proved better
for him: he finished with 17 wins and 11 losses, a 3.13 ERA, and 230
strikeouts. Despite his being limited to 31 starts on account of a
shoulder injury, the 1990 season proved to be something of a comeback
for Clemens. He did not surrender a home run to any batter until July
8, and he gave up none to right-handed batters for the entire season.
In August he won six of his starts and went without a loss while
boasting a minuscule 0.73 ERA. He piled up another 209 strikeouts,
passing Cy Young to become the Red Sox's all-time strikeout king. He
ended the season with a 21-6 record and a league-leading 1.93 ERA,
which remains his personal best. Despite his outstanding numbers, he
lost out on the Cy Young Award to Oakland's Bob Welch, who won 27
games that season.
During the off-season
Clemens found himself in trouble on a couple of fronts. In November
1990 he was issued a suspension for the first five games of the 1991
season and fined $10,000 by the American League president, Bobby
Brown, for arguing with the home-plate umpire Terry Cooney over
Cooney's calls during the AL Championship series. The situation
escalated when another umpire, Jim Evans, attempted to intervene and
Clemens shoved him. The pitcher was ejected from the game after
threatening Cooney. In January 1991 Clemens and his brother Gary were
charged with aggravated assault on a police officer during a fight in
a West Houston nightclub. His disruptive behavior on and off the field
notwithstanding, the Red Sox happily re-signed Clemens. His new
contract guaranteed him $5 million per year for the next four seasons.
Despite having lower numbers overall for the 1991 season, Clemens
clinched his third Cy Young Award that year, during which he led the
league with a 2.62 ERA and four shutouts. Between April 9 and April
23, he pitched 30 consecutive scoreless innings and was unsurpassed in
the league for innings pitched (271.1) and strikeouts (241). His 1992
season numbers were just as strong: a league-leading 2.41 ERA, five
shutouts, 208 strikeouts, and an impressive 18 wins for the year.
Over the next four years
with the Red Sox, Clemens surprised many fans and sportswriters by
proving himself to be merely human after all. His difficulties were
caused partly by injuries; he spent two stints on the disabled list in
1993, and wound up that season with a losing record (11-14) and with
fewer than 200 strikeouts (160 all told) for the first time in his
career. His ERA, meanwhile, had skyrocketed to 4.46. His play improved
somewhat during the strike-shortened 1994 season, which he ended with
a winning record of 9-7 and with a very respectable 2.85 ERA,
second-best in the league that year. His winning record would have
been higher if he had received better offensive help from the Red Sox,
who with 4.06 runs per game had the worst scoring record in the
league. Clemens even managed to produce five 10-strikeout games that
season, but that did him little good, given the rest of the team's
performance, and he began to feel increasingly frustrated with
Boston's inability to make it to the postseason. The strike, which
canceled the play-offs and World Series, did not help his morale.
When baseball returned, in
1995, Clemens was not there to help usher it in, having been placed on
the disabled list at the beginning of the season. When he did return,
he won 10 games and lost only five decisions. On the other hand, his
ERA swelled again to 4.18, leading many members of the press to
speculate that Clemens's best years were behind him. Soon, the Red Sox
front office, including general manager Dan Duquette, began to feel
the same way. His 1996 season numbers may have widened the rift
between Clemens and the Red Sox; he went only 10-13 for the year, in
part because he was distracted during the first half of the season by
contract negotiations with the front office. After the All-Star break,
Clemens returned to his dominant ways: a 6-2 record, with a 2.09 ERA,
in his last 10 starts and 123 strikeouts in 111 and 1/3 innings. His
257 season strikeouts topped the American League. On September 18,
1996, as if to prove he was still in top form, Clemens tied his own
major-league record, set a decade earlier, by striking out 20 Detroit
Tigers in his last win for the Red Sox.
Clemens's parting with the
Red Sox was not amiable. Despite his holding the team's career records
for bases on balls, games started, and strikeouts--in addition to his
having tied Cy Young's 192 victories--the management felt that he was
past his prime and was asking for too much money. "There are some
things Dan [Duquette] didn't take into consideration as much as he
should have," Clemens remarked in an interview with Rick Weinberg
for Sport (May 1997). "My dedication to conditioning, my
connection with the fans. I've never pitched for just me. When I
pitched for the Red Sox, I pitched for [general partners] Mrs. Yawkey
and John Harrington. I pitched to make them proud, to make the fans
proud."
In late 1996 Clemens
signed a four-year, $40 million free-agent deal with the Toronto Blue
Jays. The Blue Jays, who had won two World Series earlier in the
decade, were eager to rebuild their team and become contenders again.
With them Clemens staged one of the greatest comebacks in the history
of the game and became a dominant pitcher once again. In the 1997
season he won his first 11 starts and threw three shutouts and nine
complete games. Though the Blue Jays did not make it to the World
Series that year, Clemens ended his season with a 21-7 record, a 2.05
ERA, and 292 strikeouts--leading the league in all three categories
and proving that, at 35, he was still in top form. Those statistics
made him the first American League pitcher to win baseball's
"Triple Crown" since the Detroit Tigers' Hal Newhouser in
1945. He also won his fourth Cy Young Award, tying four-time winners
Steve Carlton and Greg Maddux.
In his second season in
Toronto, Clemens got off to a slow start but won his last 15 decisions
to win a total of 20 games against six losses. Those wins, added to
his 2.54 ERA and 271 strikeouts, were again the best in the league,
earning him a second Triple Crown and making him only the fourth
pitcher after Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lefty Grove, and Sandy
Koufax to win that distinction in back-to-back seasons. He also
reached a career mark of more than 3,000 strikeouts that season,
becoming the 11th pitcher in history to do so. It came as no surprise
to baseball fans that he was presented with an unprecedented fifth Cy
Young Award at the end of the 1998 season.
The Yankees had long known
Clemens as an opposing pitcher. The Red Sox and the Yankees have a
legendary rivalry, dating back to 1920, when Boston traded the
baseball giant Babe Ruth to New York; Clemens only added to the enmity
by seeming to throw directly toward Yankee batters' heads or bodies
regularly. Many wondered if he would fit in with the Yankees
organization. The Yankees' manager, Joe Torre, neatly summed up the
situation in an interview with Buster Olney for the New York Times
(February 27, 1999): "You like him once he's on your side."
Clemens had a rough start
with the Yankees, having spent some time on the disabled list
following shoulder surgery. Though he won his first five decisions in
1999, maintaining his unbeaten streak of 20 over two seasons, his ERA
for the year was a disappointing 4.60. He then suffered an
embarrassing outing against the Red Sox at Fenway Park during the
third game of the American League Championship Series against the new
Red Sox ace, Pedro Martinez. Despite New York's victory over Boston in
that series, many in the press took to calling Clemens a "choke
artist," unable to handle the pressure of big games. He redeemed
himself during the 1999 World Series against the Atlanta Braves,
pitching a strong six and 2/3 innings. New York swept Atlanta in the
series, winning their third World Series title in four years--and
bringing Clemens his first World Series ring ever.
Clemens reached an
important benchmark during the 2000 season: his 250th career victory.
He was only the 39th player in the history of the game to reach that
mark. Yet, as in the previous year, Clemens--while still an effective
pitcher--was not the dominating force he had once been. His numbers
for the year (13-8 with 189 strikeouts) were good overall, and his ERA
dropped to 3.70. But a number of occurrences over the course of the
season, in particular those involving the catcher Mike Piazza of the
New York Mets, colored the public's perception of the pitching legend.
During the second game of a double-header between the Mets and the
Yankees on July 8, 2000, Clemens hit Piazza in the helmet with an
inside fastball. The Mets catcher suffered a concussion, and the
incident nearly caused a brawl between the teams. During the second
game of the 2000 World Series, between the same two teams, after
Piazza broke his bat while getting a hit, Clemens threw a piece of the
bat at Piazza as the catcher was running to first base. That act
cleared both teams' benches and led to Clemens's being fined $50,000.
The Yankees went on to beat the Mets in five games in the first
"subway series" in over 40 years, and Clemens earned his
second World Series ring.
At the end of the 2001
season, Clemens was presented with his sixth Cy Young Award--and with
good reason. On April 2 of that year he had struck out five Kansas
City Royals to tie Walter Johnson as the American League strikeout
king, with 3,509. In his next outing he beat Johnson's record. For the
year he recorded a total of 213 strikeouts and had his first 20-game
winning season since 1998. In fact, he became the only major leaguer
ever to go 20-1 in a season, and he lost just three games during the
entire year. Clemens's pitching helped the Yankees clinch their fourth
consecutive division title as well as the American League pennant.
(The Yankees lost the World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks that
year, despite solid pitching performances by Clemens and the Yankees
closer Mariano Rivera in Game Three of that series.)
The 2002 season saw
Clemens making steady progress toward the goal of 300 career wins.
While his numbers for the season, particularly his 4.35 ERA, were not
as solid as in previous years, he went 13-6 in 29 games started and
collected another 192 strikeouts, second-best in the American League.
The Yankees again clinched the Eastern Division but lost the American
League Division Series to the Anaheim Angels. Clemens pitched the
first game of that series and allowed four earned runs and eight hits
in five and 2/3 innings. He received a no-decision in that contest,
which represented the Yankees' only victory in that five-game series.
Even before the 2003
season began, sportswriters across the country turned their attention
to Clemens's anticipated 300th career win. But as he inched closer to
that number during the first half of the season, the goal seemed to
become ever more elusive. He won his 299th game on May 22. His next
three games included two starts in which he left the mound as the
potential winning pitcher; each time, the Yankee bullpen blew the lead
and ultimately lost the game, leaving Clemens with a no-decision. On
June 13, while playing against the St. Louis Cardinals, Clemens
finally achieved his 300th victory, pitching six and 2/3 innings and
allowing two runs on six hits and two walks. He became only the 21st
player in major-league history to record that many wins. Even more
remarkably, he also recorded his 4,000th strikeout that night by
retiring the first four batters he faced in the game. Only two other
pitchers in history have thrown so many strikeouts: Steve Carlton and
Clemens's boyhood hero, Nolan Ryan. After the initial four strikeouts,
he struck out an additional six batters before the Yankees won the
game, 5-2.
Clemens and his wife,
Debbie, were married in November 1984. They have four sons: Koby, Kory,
Kacy, and Kody. Clemens has talked about retiring at the end of the
2003 season. Instead of playing baseball, he plans to watch a lot of
it, as a father cheering on his two eldest sons. "I think he
wants to come home and help the big boys, Koby and Kory," Debbie
Clemens told Tyler Kepner for the New York Times (June 14, 2003).
"I think they're all really looking forward to having him around.
I told him he has a lot of bench time when he comes home. There's
about 12 games a week." -- C.M.Suggested Reading: MSNBC.com; New
York Newsday p18+ May 22 1988, with photos; New York Times D p1 Feb.
27, 1999, VIII p1 Aug. 26, 2001, S p2 Oct. 12, 2001; New York Yankees
(on-line); Sport p57+ June 1985, with photos, p34+ May 1997, with
photos; Sporting News p13+ July 28, 1986, with photos, p11 May 9,
1988, with photos, p38+ Sep. 24, 2001; Sports Illustrated p57 Oct. 23,
2000, p40+ Oct. 30, 2000, p48+ Sep. 10, 2001; Village Voice p192 Oct.
16, 2001; Washington Post C p1+ Nov. 21, 1990, C p2 Jan. 20, 1991;
Clemens, Roger, and Peter Gammons. Rocket Man, 1987
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