The recent signing of Roger Clemens to a 28 million dollar pro rated contract was a perfect example of a some what insignificant news item blown way out of proportion. http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2007/05/06/clemens_chooses_yankees_red_sox_caught_by_surprise/
The previous article by Gordon Edes of the Globe seems to be written more for the consumption of the Globe's New York owners than for the Boston fan base.
Insignificant you say? How can a seven time Cy Young award winner going to the evil empire be insignificant. The insignificance is what impact Clemens is going to have on the New York Yankees this season. Clemens will be 45 this August and for the past three years he has been pitching in the National League which by comparison to the American League Eastern division is a notch above the minors.
Clemens has not faced a line up as powerful as the Red Sox in a very long time. It is unlikely that he is going to be much of a factor for the Yankees in trying to shore up their front line starting pitching.
There are a couple of things that are startling about this deal by the Yankees. It is amazing how quickly it has dawned on George Steinbrenner that the make up of this Yankee team is not nearly good enough to compete in the division. Yes they are a great hitting team but the starting and relieving pitching is so bad that they find themselves ten games out of first place and we are not even out of May yet.
The signing of Clemens for this ridiculous amount of money amounts to George being in a mindless panic. It was reported that the Sox and the Houston Astros were in the bidding for Clemen's services but even if true about the Sox it is non sense to trump their bid by over 10 million dollars. Roger would have pitched for a lot less money because Clemens has proven over his career that he is about the money.
As for any surprise about Roger "Rocket" Clemens signing with the Yankees, Lance Berkman of the Astros summed it up best when he said, "with this Rocket situation, there's two kinds of people: people that are not surprised and morons,"
There was a great deal of talk in the papers and surprise and disappointment that Clemens was not coming to Boston to finish out his career in a blaze of glory. This was clearly a case of wishful thinking. An aging pitcher with a reputation for quitting on the team was more likely to be a disastrous ending than any kind of a fairy tale. Many of us long time fans could not bear to see him back in a Sox uniform.
For those of you who harbored such thoughts please go back and look at Clemens last four years here. During the stretch from 93 though 96, Clemens was a pedestrian 40 wins and 39 losses and had the body of the Pillsbury Doughboy. At that time then Red Sox general Manager Dan Duquette commented that Clemens was in the "twilight of his career".
The Red Sox failed to re-sign Clemens and he went to Toronto for big money so "he could be closer to his home in Texas". Clemens should remember Duquette in his will because he more than anybody was responsible for his wake up call to get himself back in shape.
The rest of course is history and surely will result in a deserved place in Cooperstown for the hard throwing and very durable Texan. His career statistics are unmistakable in their grandeur and cannot be denied by the most hard core Clemens critic. His 348 wins, over 4000 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.10 speak for themselves.http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/clemero02.shtml
Like all good things however, at some time they come to an end. It is more than likely that Clemens stat line this year will look a lot more like those of other aging ball players who have come to the end of the line. The Yankees as always will get better before the end of the season but it will not be because of a story book ending by Clemens.
