IMAGE FROM HARPER-COLLINS.
Frank Rodasky
Reporter
Baseball fans know Roger Clemens as one of the all time great pitchers. A big, burly Texan with laser focus intensity and a work ethic that somehow seemed to keep him eternally competitive.
Like many sports stories, this is more myth than fact, much of it created and perpetuated by Clemens himself.
But whereas most athletes are able to leave their sport with much of their legend in tact, with the sordid details emerging later, Clemens saw his reputation dismantled before his eyes while he was still active. In fact, it was Clemens himself who did much of the damage simply by his unwillingness to let go of success and bow to father time.
“The Rocket That Fell to Earth: Roger Clemens And The Rage For Baseball Immortality” is a new biography by SI.com writer Jeff Pearlman, who also wrote “Love Me, Hate Me” the great biography on Barry Bonds.
Like Bonds, Clemens makes a fascinating sports biography subject; a driven, record-setting star less than loved by his teammates, who’s age-defying ability to get better each year was based on the use of performance enhancing drugs.
RISE OF THE ROCKET
Pearlman paints a portrait of a man whose greatest strength was his drive to succeed, to be something other than what he actually was.
A fat, unremarkable athlete who grew up in Ohio, not Texas, in the shadow of his older brother, the real star athlete.
Although Clemens would claim to have been drafted by the Minnesota Twins straight out of high school, it was his brother who had pro scouts’ interest.
Clemens himself had to settle for pitching at a junior college in Texas, relying on its coaches to transform him into a power pitcher before the University of Texas at Austin would accept him as a transfer.
Although at this stage most scouts considered him unremarkable, Clemens already saw greatness in his future, telling people “they call me the Rocket,” although only he referred to himself this way. He even signed early autographs as “Rocket Man.”
One of the interesting storylines of Clemens’ rise to fame is his passing of his brother, whose future in sports was torpedoed by drugs and alcohol.
His brother’s addictions would trouble him Clemens most of his life, climaxing with the murder of Clemens’ sister in law by drug dealers. Clemens would never forgive his brother for this event; he loved his sister in law like a second mother. Eventually, Clemens would cut his brother from his life completely.
THE RED SOX YEARS
As a pro with the Boston Red Sox, Clemens was seen by his teammates as concerned only with his own performance, and his own statistics. He would frequently disappear from the dugout after pitching; almost never sticking around to cheer his teammates on once he was out of the game.
After Clemens missed the first week of training camp one year, new Red Sox manager Butch Hobson joined his star pitcher for a warm up jog, only to have Clemens wear earphones during the attempted conversation.
In the blue-collar town of Boston, he received bad press for complaining about having to carry his own bags at airports.
Like many athletes, Clemens saw himself at war with the local press. One Boston sports writer had hamburger buns thrown at him in the clubhouse after publishing a critical story.
The image of Clemens that emerges from this time is of a man who completely has bought into the superstar lifestyle, falling to the negative temptations of ego and entitlement, but also embracing the more some of the civic demands.
Known for his dedication to conditioning, Clemens was known for his grueling pre- and post-game workouts (sometimes running eight miles after he pitched), and for abstaining from a lifestyle of partying on the road common to ballplayers.
He took his role as a hero to local kids seriously, also. When visiting an ill child at a local hospital, the young boy didn’t recognize Clemens because the pitcher was wearing street clothes. Clemens rushed back to Fenway, changed into his playing uniform, and then returned to the boy to prove his identity.
Even teammates who were not close to Clemens testified to witnessing him being moved to tears by letters from sick children, or their visits to the Red Sox clubhouse.
Pearlman covers Clemens final Boston years with more fairness than most have become accustomed.
While supporting Red Sox General Manager Dan Duquette’s claim that allowing Clemens to leave as a free agent was justified by the pitcher being in “the twilight” of his career (Clemens statistics had been regressing, as older pitchers tend to do), the writer sets the record straight about the 1986 World Series.
Long reported as Clemens asking out after the seventh inning of game six, because he couldn’t handle the pressure, several of his former teammates came to his defense in the book.
Thanks to the recent documented evidence of Clemens’ performance enhancing drugs, his post Red Sox career is no longer seen as dedication driven, but more as steroid-fueled. In his mid to late 30s, Clemens, with the help of steroids suddenly had a falling ERA, and a revitalized fastball.
THE ROCKET RE-BORN
Each year, from his time in Toronto, to New York, to Houston, Clemens seemed to get better as he got older. Each year, he seemed to become a more aggressive pitcher, throwing at the heads of Mike Piazza and Alex Rodriguez, with little or no consequence.
He barked at umpires, threw a broken shard of a baseball bat at Piazza’s feet in the 2000 World Series, grunting and snorting like a bull, feeding off his own aggression in order to be great.
When he came out of a short- lived retirement to join the Houston Astros in 2004, Clemens had it written into his contract that he only had to be with the team on days that he pitched. He was the highest paid player on the team, and one of the highest paid pitchers in the game, and was essentially a part timer.
This reaffirmed to Clemens his license to live how he pleased. If a hitter was successful against him as Piazza had been, he would just throw a ninety-mile hour fastball at his head, the possible fatal consequences be damned.
If his Astros teammates didn’t like him living by his own rules, who were they to talk? He had two rings with the Yankees. Besides, he had come to Houston to raise the team to his level, not become a cog in the machine.
Clemens repeated his savior routine in 2007, announcing from the owner’s box at Yankee Stadium that the Yankees had “came and got me outta Texas,” when in fact Clemens had been shopping himself back to Boston, who didn’t show him enough desperation or money to convince him to return.
DEAD PITCHER WALKING
Pearlman uses a chapter near the end of the book called “Dead Pitcher Walking” to illustrate a clear microcosm of what may have been Clemens’ biggest fault; never knowing when to quit. On his final go-round in New York, Clemens would prove to be injury prone and average, and the ghosts of past misdeeds would finally come back to haunt him.
When his former trainer testified to Clemens’ steroid use, the pitcher’s legal team began a smear campaign that backfired on Clemens, revealing his long history of marital infidelities, most notably with troubled country singer Mindy McCready, who he began seeing while she was still a teen.
Yet the deeper Clemens dug himself, the more defiant he became. Long used to brushing back the hitter, he was no running out of gas.
Like Pearlman’s book on Bonds, Clemens is hardly a likable figure. He is driven to be great, yet unloved by much of his peers, like Bonds. But throughout, the writer tries to decipher the complexities of a man who could be so giving with the stricken or needy, yet so distant to the members of his exclusive baseball fraternity, while outwardly still seeming to need it so much.
Because the investigation into whether he lied to lawmakers is still ongoing, the book’s publication seems a bit premature, because Clemens’ story is not finished.
Perhaps he will skate by like he always has, or perhaps the paperback edition will include a new chapter on his forthcoming jail sentence for perjury. Either way, the biography functions as hard lesson for those who come to see success as an entitlement.