Baseball

Rocket’s return not about winning titles

Picking Astros proves Clemens wants to pitch, but be near family

Robert Galbraith / Reuters file

With 341 wins and seven Cy Young awards, Roger Clemens doesn't have anything else to prove in baseball, MSNBC.com contributor Mike Celizic writes.

We’re just two months into a six-month season, and Houston has shown before that it can start abysmally and end heroically. But if the object was to have the best chance of getting to the World Series, Houston wasn’t the choice.

From that, you can assume he’s pitching simply because he can’t not pitch, not when he’s coming off the lowest ERA of his career, not when he can still dominate major league hitters. He can no more stop pitching than a fox terrier can stop barking at the mail carrier.

There is another reason beyond the love of competition to come back, though. That is that Greg Maddux, who is nearly four years younger than Clemens, who turns 44 in August, is just 18 wins back in the all-time standings. Given that he doesn’t rely on a fastball that leaves sonic booms in its wake, Maddux could have two or three years left in him — enough time to catch Clemens if the Rocket doesn’t return to active duty.

This is no knock on Maddux, who is as fine a practitioner of the art of pitching as you’re ever likely to see. But if you’re the Rocket, you don’t want some corner-nibbling, speed-changing, slow-and-slower baseball intellectual passing you on the all-time list. The only way to keep that from happening is to put a bit more distance between you and him.

Right now, with 341 lifetime wins, Clemens is in ninth place, one win behind Tim O’Keefe, whose career began 15 years after Lee surrendered to Grant and ended in 1891. Only one pitcher whose career ended after 1930 is ahead of Clemens. That’s Warren Spahn, the winningest leftie ever. The master of changing speeds, Spahn won 363 games in a career that began in 1942, was interrupted by three years serving in the armed forces during World War II and ended in 1965.

With two wins, Clemens takes over eighth place, which is where he’ll probably stay unless he can wring yet another half-season out of a right arm that is one of the wonders of nature. Considering that no righthander has done better in the past 76 years, that’s beyond remarkable.

It’s a position worth protecting against Maddux and anyone else in this pitch-count era who wants to try to do better. Clemens is undoubtedly aware of where he stands. And if it were only about making sure he stays ahead of Maddux, he would have gone to Boston or New York.

But he went to Houston, where he can have it all — a normal family life and the ball every fifth day. Good for him. He’s earned it.

Mike Celizic writes regularly for MSNBC.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.

< Prev | 1 | 2