Mike Celizic

The decision is hardly a surprise. Roger Clemens has been playing the retirement game so often and with so little success, there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t come back for another half season of work in his circular office.

After all, what other job pays $3.5 million a month for showing up once every five days and involves tens of thousands of people screaming your praise when all you’ve done is walk from the dugout to the mound?

Apparently, that’s what drove Clemens to make his decision: the ability to play ball, to stand on his little hill in the epicenter of an explosion of noise, the sheer, adrenaline-pumping joy of competing against other men, some of whom weren’t even born when he began his nearly matchless career.

It’s not about winning pennants this time. It can’t be. He had his pick of the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers and Astros. Any of the first three choices would have given him excellent chances of making the postseason and trying to collect one more ring. The final choice, the one he made (although the Astros and his agent are carefully saying it's not official), offered the smallest chance of pitching beyond the end of the regular season.

The story would have been so much better had he made a different choice. If he had returned to Boston, the city that all but banned him, and had pitched the Red Sox past the Yankees and into the World Series, there would have been six books about it published before the following March. In New York, it would have been pretty much the same thing. Plus, with the Yankees, he could have forced Randy Johnson to take the No. 2 slot in the rotation, and that’s the kind of wicked fun you can’t have anywhere else.

The Rangers are the worst of the American League suitors, but they’re playing in what is proving to be a pathetically weak AL West, a division they lead. Adding Clemens to that team would all but guarantee the playoffs, something neither Boston nor New York can claim, not with the likelihood of the wild card coming out of the runner-up in the AL Central battle between Detroit and Chicago.

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But who says Clemens has to maximize his chances of getting another ring? He’s got his rings, he’s got his awards, he’s got his standing as perhaps the greatest right-hander ever. A lot of people say they’ve got nothing left to prove, but Clemens is one of the few who can say it without hearing an argument from a columnist.

Being a firm believer in continuing to do what you love doing just as long as you can keep doing it, I’m just glad he’s coming back. He might not be the most cuddly man in the game, but watching him pitch is like watching Michelangelo hack away at a hunk of marble. If you’re a fan of the game, you don’t care where he pitches, just as long as you get to watch.

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In Houston, Clemens calls every shot. He doesn’t have to make trips except for the day he’s pitching, and even when the team is at home, he doesn’t really have to come to the park when he’s not expected to work, freeing him to mingle with his family.

His eldest son, Koby, is also a prospect in the Astros’ organization, and no other team can offer him the prospect of perhaps taking the field with him during the final month of the season, when rosters expand to 40 and teams call up minor leaguers for a taste of life in the bigs.

Clemens has certainly earned the right to go where he likes and set his own rules. And if you think that’s not fair, tough. Win an unprecedented seven Cy Young Awards and you can have the same privileges.

We also know that money wasn’t an object. Any of the four teams would have met pretty much any price he asked. But staying close to home Clemens decided to stay with the Astros, which began Tuesday sitting on .500, fourth in the NL Central with 11 National League teams ahead of them in the standings.