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“It’s another challenge,” Roger Clemens said Sunday of returning for another season. “I expect to do things at the age of 44, 45 like I did at 25.”

Clemens is eighth on the career wins list with 348 and second in strikeouts with 4,604. He was 7-6 with a 2.30 ERA last season for Houston.

“The only time I’ll be disappointed is if my body breaks down, and I’m going to put the work and the time in to hopefully not allow that to happen,” he said. “I expect to perform like I was 25, that’s my expectations. Anything short of that would be a disappointment.”

The Yankees, 14-15 and 5½ games behind AL East-leading Boston, have seen so many pitchers get hurt that they are set to become on Monday the first team in major league history to use 10 starters in its first 30 games. The Yankees tried to persuade Clemens to join them when he visited their spring training camp on March 7.

“Make no mistake about it, the Yankees were in both of my ears the whole time,” Clemens said. “And that was well before they even had the problems that they’ve had on the mound.”

Clemens will have the same travel privileges he had with Houston last year, when he sometimes skipped road trips if he wasn’t scheduled to pitch, spending time at home with his family and working with Astros minor leaguers. Torre discussed the arrangement with his veteran players before the Yankees agreed.

“If he’d like, I’d carry his bags out to the car,” Jason Giambi joked.

Red Sox players were saddened to lose out on Clemens, but being in first place cushioned the blow.

“It would have been nice to have him, but we didn’t need him,” Curt Schilling said. “I feel like we were a legitimate World Series contender without him.”

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Houston catcher Brad Ausmus was disappointed.

“I would much rather have Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens on this team with us,” he said. “They’re big-game winning pitchers. I loved playing with them.”

Clemens, despite annual retirement announcements, shows few signs of slowing down. He joked when a question was asked about the length of the contract.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said. “I think I can go right into senior softball.”

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