It’s time for Roger Clemens to retire. Not a trumped-up, phony farewell. Not a “oh, please Roger come back” moment. It’s time for Roger Clemens to retire … for real.

I don’t say this with enmity; Clemens is the greatest pitcher of the past 20 years and one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. He is a lock first-ballot Hall of Famer and it has been thrilling to watch him. To be honest, I say it with disappointment and sadness. I truly hoped that Clemens would return to the Yankees and show his greatness and inspire and lead the Yankees to make it a race in the AL East. A runaway victory by either the Red Sox or the Yankees in the division feels hollow.

Roger Clemens should retire because he is not Roger Clemens anymore; he is an ordinary No. 4 or 5 starter. The fact that he can still pitch better than at least 50 percent of the starters in the majors is simply a reflection of how miserable so many starters are and the vast difference in talent that Roger once exhibited that he can lose so much and yet still be competitive.

And he has lost a lot. In the game Thursday against the White Sox, he was actually awful enough to get booed by the Bronx faithful. Clemens has always been the best against the best, but on Thursday he was bad against the worst.

It’s not just this one game that leads me to this call. It’s not the fact that Clemens didn't record a strikeout while failing to get out of the second inning. What it comes down to is the reality that Clemens is 3-5 with a 4.23 ERA this season. He is barely breaking 90 on the speed gun and Clemens is a power pitcher. His splitters are too often breaking low and inside, right in the wheel-house of left-handed batters, and they are not fooling anyone.

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From his first start against the Pirates, he has been falling behind batters and clearly the strategy for opposing teams is to make him throw  a lot of pitches, and make him throw the ball over the plate. He is and they are hitting him. It may take a few innings, but it is only a matter of time before he is the one who breaks down. He told reporters after one game, "You could see how the game was breaking down," Clemens said. "I've been in hundreds of those types of games and you just want to stay away from the big inning." He didn’t.

Clemens has thrown countless innings in countless major league games, and I hope that he knows that it is time. Mike Schmidt knew it was time. It was the end of May in 1989 when Schmidt, perhaps baseball’s greatest third baseman, retired. At 39, he was hitting .203 with six homers when his golden glove started to fail him. Schmidt’s glove was to him like the splitter is to Clemens.

''Over the years, I've set high standards for myself as a player, and I always said that when I couldn't live up to those standards I would retire,'' Schmidt said when he announced his retirement on May 29, 1989. ''I no longer have the skills needed to make adjustments at the plate to hit or to make some plays in the field and run the bases.

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