A Baseball Post, sort of....

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge baseball fan. I like going to games, watching them on TV, scanning for them on AM radio while Tricia and I are driving around on any given summer night. I even paid extra money so that I can listen to every game, every day on the Internet, broadcast by the hometown announcers. That's a little purchase I like to call "best purchase I've ever made".

Anyway, if you don't know, Roger Clemens is a baseball player who was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the 1983 out of Texas. He pitched for the BoSox until 1996, then signed with the Toronto Blue Jays, partly because he felt unwelcome in Boston (then-GM Dan Duquette was quoted as saying that Clemens "had entered the twilight of his career"). He pitched for the Jays for a few years, but then orchestrated a trade out of Canada in 1999 to the Yankees, where he won a World Series in 1999 and 2000.

After pitching in 2003, he debated about whether to retire, but decided to sign a one year contract with his hometown Houston Astros in 2004 for like $5 million (he was worth much more) so that he could be close to home (and not be at the stadium on days he wouldn't pitch) and pitch with his buddy, Andy Pettite, who had also recently signed a contract. After that contract and declaring he was "99% retired", he decided to re-sign another one year deal for 2005, this time with no hometown discount and at a value of $18 million. In 2005, the Astros reached the World Series for the first time, led by their hometown boys of Clemens--who had pitched amazing that season, giving up fewer than 2 runs per nine inning pitched (consider that a great pitcher gives up a little less than 3)--Pettite, and longtime Astros Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio (who had changed positions numerous times for "the good of the team" and is approaching 3,000 hits in his career). A storybook ending? Wrong! They were swept 4-0 by the Chicago White Sox.

After that season, Clemens kept saying he was retired and never tried to negotiate a contract, but it was always a "wink-wink" kind of deal. My memory is a little hazy, but I think he was offered a deal and if he refused that deal and had not signed by a certain day, he couldn't sign with any team until May 1. Which is great because he could miss spring training and the first month of the season and pitch better later in the year because he was less fatigued. So the Rocket gave it another go, this time signing a $22 million dollar deal that would be prorated to his number of starts. He finished the year 7-6 on an abysmal team, giving up a sterling average of 2.3 runs per nine innings (as a 43 year old). He was 43, he was tired, he was 80% retired.

SIKE! At 44 years old and with offers from the Rangers, Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox, Clemens announced his decision to come out of retirement and pitch for the Yankees, at a salary of $28 million (prorated to about $18 million).

That brings me to the purpose of this post. One, I want you all to know how truly patient Tricia is because she has to put with this type of story, both in subject and length, roughly 5 times a week. And like all those stories, they have a point that is usually dumb and serves no purpose other than to show her a stupid clip I found. Which is the precise point of this post. I have a video I want to post and I hope you all will humor me in watching it. It shows the Roger Clemens (Rocket! Rocket!) 50 years from now, George Steinbrenner (who is about 80 years old now and has owned the Yankees since the 1970s, a stint that included a few years where he wouldn't be the "owner" because he had been on probation for giving illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign), and the son of current General Manager Brian Cashman (who has tried really hard to get Steinbrenner to bring his payroll down to closer to league average of ~$90 million/year from nearly $250 million/year). Obviously, I found it funny and look forward to many more years of "Rocket! Rocket!"