Roger Clemens Comeback Tonight

i still can't believe ESPN is going to carry Class A baseball on national television.....but you know what i might watch a little.

 

I was planning on it. Then again, the way things are going for the Astros right now, it wouldn't suprise me if Rocket got either hurt or shelled.

Wow...that was positive....

 

Slightly off topic ,but why is ESPNs PTI reporting trade rumors about Roger Clemens?

They're saying that Roger Clemens wants to win a World Series and since it doesn't look so good in Houston, Roger might want to go to the Yankees or Red Sox. It looks like ESPN desperately wants Clemens in NY or Boston.

 

because ESPN has zero credibility. none. nada. zilch. nothing outside of boston or ny has any meaning to them in the world of baseball.

idiots, if had wanted to sign with nyy or boston...he would have done so.

 

They mentioned it because it was in the NY Post (or daily news, one of those). Yes, the New York papers would love to have Clemens on the Yankees, and Kornheiser would as well. It would be a good story for ESPN, since the Rocket already did the going home to Houston story, but other than that, I don't think they care.

 

McLane: Do you want to play another season?
Clemens: No!
McLane: Will you sign a huge deal so we can trade you for AROD? You could retire right after the trade.
Clemens: Sure, but I want 3 million a month and a bulldozer twice the size Roy's.

 

He was just taken deep for a home run. He'll fit right in with the major league Astros.

 

lol he's just working all of his pitches in

 

That's a waste of a good start. He should have just gone straight to the bigs, no warm up needed.

 

Roger is lookin a lil hefty

 

To be fair, the PTI guys made fun of the rumors and said they are loony (more or less).

 

Did you see how fast that kid ran the bases when he hit that home run? I don't blame him. If it were me, I would have just put my head down and ran FULL SPEED around those bases. No high-fives for the 1st and 3d base coaches either.

After the game, I would probably come up to Roger and say "sorry, sir."

 

To be fair... that kid was probably really a kid, and that HR may be the greatest accomplishment he'll ever have playing professional baseball.

If I were him, I don't know how I'd keep myself from jumping up and down all over the place, and acting like a fool who was the happiest guy alive.

Anyways, looking at this start, I expected him to look pretty good (even if he was pitching at the big leagues) simply because adrenaline is helping him out big-time. Its how he feels tommorow, and how he performs in his next two starts (when his body starts telling him that he's really 43) that I'm more interested in.

Will ESPN be covering him getting out of bed tommorow, showering, and analyzing his form when he's lathering up... looking for signs of fatigue?? I figured they should... that was a little bit "overboard" today.

 

Oh, I hear you. It's just that I would want to get out of there ALIVE before I start celebrating. Especially if I had to face him again.

 

You think? I actually thought he looked like he had lost some weight.

 

The Indians don't hope you are right. He's supposedly a stud they drafted with their first round pick last year.

 

I do believe that coverage was just a little over the top.

 

I agree. As much as I love Roger, ESPN having multiple analysts over this was sad.

 

Here's a GREAT article on the kid that hit the home run, the Clemens "boys" playing together, and all the other happenings at Lexington while Roger was there.

One small step forward for Roger; One giant HR for teenager.


One small step for Rocket; one giant HR for teenager

By Pat Forde
ESPN.com
Archive


LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Johnny Drennen was California coolin' it two hours before stepping in against the first legend ever to play for the Lexington Legends, Mr. Roger Clemens.

"It's just like facing any other pitcher," the 19-year-old from San Diego said, sounding just cocky enough to believe his silly cliché. "Look fastball, hit fastball."

I rolled my eyes listening to the kid. Two hours later, I was pulling my chin up off my laptop keyboard.

Look fastball, hit fastball, watch fastball shockingly leave Applebee's Park and clatter forcefully off the Pepsi Party Deck in left field. Listen to the "whoooooo!" ripple through a beyond-packed house of 9,222. Watch a guy who was drafted out of high school at this time last year circle the bases on an icon who picks his teeth with hot-shot hitters. Watch a guy who was born two months before Clemens won the first of his seven Cy Youngs play Rocket Buster on the night labeled "Rocket Relaunch" by the giddy Legends.

Thanks to Clemens' careful scripting of his comeback from semi-retirement, Lexington lucked into the biggest event in the Class A franchise's five-year history. Much the way Drennen lucked into a hanging split-fingered fastball that allowed No. 22 for the Lake County Captains to take No. 22 for the Cooperstown Immortals deep.

"I was thinking that he had a great number, so I'd hang him a split," Clemens joked after step one in his comeback attempt to amaze America once more. "I hung it to him, and he did what you're supposed to do with it. ... I'll ask him how he liked the room service."

Score the entire evening a lovely event for Americana. Score it a lovely event for baseball, which had one of its most compelling and enduring figures bring the nation's media flocking to a stylish bandbox park far off the beaten big-league path. And score Drennen's blast a first-inning solo home run and a first-ballot Hall of Fame memory for a kid toiling in low-A ball.

Drennen was a first-round pick, 33rd overall, so he's not exactly a Bad News Bear. But given the layers currently separating him from The Show, and the stature of the guy he jacked, this shot was as stunning as the one Buster Douglass dropped on Mike Tyson in Tokyo.

This was a high-schooler dunking on Shaq. A club pro beating Tiger in a one-hole playoff. A D-II DB picking off Peyton and taking it to the house.

If the kid goes hitless for the rest of his life and winds up selling insurance someday, he'll always have this AB.

"It's a pretty sweet feeling," Drennen admitted, dropping his pregame nonchalance a notch. "It'll be with me all my life."

All it took was one fat pitch from a rusty pitcher to make Drennen the answer to a trivia question. And to prove that even with the hysterical attention showered upon Clemens in the first outing of his $12 million attempt to save the Houston Astros' season, this gorgeous night in central Kentucky was more about the youngsters than the grand old man.

It may or may not have been the start of something big for 43-year-old Clemens. He looks splendidly fit and sounded pleased with his outing, especially the postgame throwing he did in the Legends' indoor cage.

But three innings, 62 pitches, six strikeouts, three hits and the one startling home run wasn't enough to pass a referendum on Clemens' readiness to dominate major leaguers one more time. That's a couple of weeks and a couple of rungs up the organizational ladder away.

"One step down," Clemens said. "Two to go."

This first step, and this night, was for the wide-eyed Legends who got to be teammates with the pitching legend for a few unforgettable days. Clemens delivered the youngsters a pep talk when he arrived in Lexington: you're the game's future.

"You're going to fail," Clemens told them. "A lot of people will doubt you. You might get traded, might never make it to the big leagues with the team that signed you. But you're doing what a lot of people want to do."

The very sight of Clemens on a Class A mound for the national anthem, flanked by the hokey-charming trappings of minor-league ball -- big-headed mascots and a tiny Little Leaguer -- was the stuff of scrapbooks. But it might not have been the nicest sight of the week for the Legends.

They piled off a bus after a weekend road trip to Hagerstown, Md., at 3 Monday morning and walked into Christmas in June. While they were gone Rocket had remodeled their clubhouse, spending $7,000 on plasma televisions, new couches and other touches. He went shopping Sunday and had a crew get everything installed that night, before the Legends came dragging home.

"Everyone was cranky, yelling at each other after trying to sleep in the coffins on the bus," shortstop Tommy Manzella said. "To have someone so nice to do something like that is amazing.

"We're far from the big leagues, but in his mind we're the same guys as he is: dedicating our lives to baseball. He respects that."

The Legend Clemens likes most, of course, is his 19-year-old son, Koby, who played third base in a priceless family moment. Clemens' two other sons served as bat boys, but it was Koby who supplied a comical pep talk to pops before his final inning of work.

Roger figured Koby was going to give him a scouting report on the next Lake County hitter. Wrong. His oldest boy pointed out that dad had four strikeouts to that point and needed to bear down and deliver a classic minor-league freebie.

"He told me, 'One more punchout and everyone in the stadium gets wiper fluid,' " Roger said. " … He's a funny guy, isn't he?"

The funny guy apparently knows which buttons to push. Clemens punched out not one but two Captains to close his night's work.

"Shoulda told you that in the first inning," Koby chirped to his dad coming off the field.

One of the Rocket's final two punchout victims? Johnny Drennen, who waved weakly at a fastball away for strike three.

But you know what? The anonymous kid from Class A will take 1-for-2 against the Rocket. Take it and tuck it away in his memory for the rest of his life.