borrowing from John UpdIKE, Constellation Field, in Sugar Land, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green. The scoreboard is shaped like the state of Texas. Local ads are plastered on the outfield wall and hang off billboards above it—Jackson Air and Heat, Fort Bend Christian Academy, ABC Home Services—calling cards for this suburb
30 minutes southwest of Houston, filled with big-box stores built from the same sand-coloured bricks. Tall cans of Busch go for $4.75. The Picnic Plaza food stand features BBQ chicken with sides of baked beans or coleslaw, as well as freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies and watermelon slices. The park packs in more than 7,500 people, with standing room and $8 tickets for a piece of grass beyond right field. Near the cheap seats, a sign points out directions to the modern ballpark essentials: a children’s water park and carousel, and a beer garden next to it. The sign also shows the way to iconic stations of baseball nostalgia and myth, pointing to Dyersville, Iowa—the setting of Field of Dreams, where Kevin Costner gave “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox a cornfield to play in. And to Cooperstown.
Both connect to the commotion in the bullpen, tucked behind the right-field wall. Pop. A baseball smacks leather. Pop. People lean over a railing to snap photos. Pop. Police officers guard the bullpen gate. Pop. Cameramen crowd behind the pitcher. Pop. Country singer Toby Keith sits quietly at the back of the bullpen and watches. Pop. The catcher crouches in front of a banner that reads “Rocket Man.” Pop. Pop. Pop.
Fifteen minutes before game time, the name echoes from the speakers above home plate as the starting lineups for the Sugar Land Skeeters and the Long Island Ducks are announced: “And pitching… seven-time Cy Young winner… the Rrrrocket, Rrrroger Clemens.” Based on the roar that rises from the crowd, it might as well be Nolan Ryan. But Clemens doesn’t seem to notice. He just fires more pitches, perfecting his splitter, shaking the dust from his fastball.
Roger Clemens has been called many things: fiercely competitive, insecure, prideful, a philanthropist, deeply caring, one-dimensional, greedy, focused, unpredictable, a family man, a workhorse, a cheater. He’s been called the greatest pitcher of a generation and a disgrace to the game. “Roger is about as complicated a guy as there has ever been in Major League Baseball,” says Tony Massarotti, who covered Clemens and the Red Sox for the Boston Herald in the early ’90s. His legacy in sport remains unfinished—no one is certain how history will remember him, which narrative will take hold. But much will be decided in 2013, when the Rocket is scheduled to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. A group of baseball writers will decide if his 354 wins, two World Series rings and seven Cy Young Awards outweigh the allegations that he prolonged his career and padded his numbers by using performance-enhancing drugs. That is, of course, if he appears on the ballot at all; a potential return to the big leagues with the Houston Astros this season will turn the clock back five years on his eligibility. The court of public opinion is in session. And Clemens is making his case—standing back on the mound for a team no one has ever heard of.
“It’s all he knows. All his glory, all his money, everything, the attention came from baseball,” says Jeff Pearlman, author of The Rocket That Fell to Earth. “Without it, he’s really barren.” So is this about Cooperstown? Or is Sugar Land his Iowa cornfield—a place to play the game and, perhaps, to prove that he still can?
This is the second coming. In Sugar Land, anyway. Blue “CLEMENS 21” T-shirts are being sold for $15, and it seems every third person has bought one. He’s stamped on the cover of Skeeters Illustrated, a free program, looking like a middle-aged dad in a weekend beer league. But if the fans here were his Hall of Fame voters, Cooperstown would already be ordering the plaque. “Jiminy Cricket, he’s 50 years old and still throwing like that?” says David Norris, a silver-haired 60-year-old usher who works sections 17 and 18. “I don’t really care about anything else.” Neither does Renee McGah, a Boston native sitting in the second row. “Boston fans, they can be unforgiving,” she says, with a thick New England accent, recalling his fateful move to the Yankee pinstripes. “But I’m forgiving. After all he’s been through, he’s trying to redeem himself with baseball.” Allegations be damned, the only thing that matters is that he’s here—and he’s still packing an 88-mph fastball.
And yes, at 50, it’s remarkable. But it’s just a shadow of the man who led the Boston Red Sox to the World Series with 24 wins in 1986, earning him American League MVP honours and his first Cy Young. Or the man who struck out 20 Seattle Mariners at Fenway that same season—the first pitcher ever to reach that mark. Or who, a decade later, accomplished the feat again. That win, over the Detroit Tigers on Sept. 18, 1996, tied Cy Young’s franchise record of 192 in a Red Sox jersey. Clemens is well aware of his place in baseball history. He understands the mystique of names like Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn, and Christy Mathewson. “He very much thinks of himself in that same class,” says Massarotti. Clemens’s sprawling mansion in Houston is filled with baseball memorabilia: jerseys, caps, bats and balls that belonged to the greats of the game like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose. Baseballs marking Clemens’s own achievements are interspersed in a collection that includes a Hank Aaron jersey with every living 500–home run player’s autograph on it and a Nolan Ryan jersey signed by every 300-game winner. He keeps an old, jaundiced ball signed by Cy Young in a glass case. “He’s a true fan,” says journalist Pat Jordan, who profiled Clemens for the New York Times magazine in 2001. “He’s a fan of himself, really. But he’s also a fan of baseball.”
It’s deeper than that, though, isn’t it? Clemens believed his own baseball legend before it existed. He willed it into being. He was a pudgy kid with a slow fastball who became a No. 3 starter at Spring Woods High School in Houston. He saw the bright lights of the majors while still on the mound for San Jacinto Community College. He sent Texas Longhorns coach Cliff Gustafson back to the dugout when he was about to get pulled in the ninth inning of the 1983 College World Series. “I ain’t coming out, Coach,” he said. “This is my game. I’ve got it.” He retired three straight to win the title. You see, it’s deeper than a love for the game. It’s more than a passion; it’s everything. It’s what his older brother taught him. Randy Clemens, a local basketball star, became his role model after the death of their stepdad when Clemens was eight. “[Randy] taught him this ferociousness, this determination—this ‘go after it, or don’t even bother’ [attitude],” says Pearlman.
And so we find a man determined to outwork, and yes, to outlast. We find a man who’d spend hours in a gym, working well beyond the needs of a pitcher. A man who’d have his wife drive him to an empty little league field to throw nine innings of an imaginary game because he’d been pulled in the first inning of a real one. A man with no qualms about throwing at a batter’s head, and willing to chuck a shattered bat at a runner. Who’d refer to himself as “the Rocket,” and add his accomplishments to his signature: Cy Young, ’86, ’87, ’91. And who gave all four of his sons names that start with “K,” in honour of his favourite thing. We find a man who is remembered mostly as a damn good teammate, with a few quirks of superstardom: transporting his glove in a special box, having more than a dozen jerseys because he doesn’t like wearing a sweaty one, missing team meetings for a round of golf (and lashing out at a Toronto club when his round wasn’t comped). We find an era’s greatest pitcher. A man who became his own legend, unable to let it go.
When it comes to retirement, Roger Clemens is Brett Favre on, well, steroids. It happened first at 41, with the Yankees, in 2003. After a glorious farewell tour, he changed his mind. Clemens returned with the Astros in 2004 and won his seventh Cy Young. In 2005, he signed another one-year contract—this time for $18 million—and posted a 1.87 ERA, the lowest in his 22-year career. He implied he’d retire after representing the U.S. at the 2006 World Baseball Classic. Nope. He re-upped for another season, signing yet another one-year deal with Houston, for $12.2 million. It looked like time had finally caught up with him—he averaged less than six innings a start. He received yet another massive goodbye—a standing ovation from the Astros faithful after his last start. Then… no… it can’t be… it is. Up in George Steinbrenner’s box in May of 2007, Clemens told Yankee Stadium that the Rocket was returning to Gotham (for $17.4 million).
He was far from dominant that final season, finishing with an ERA of 4.18 in 17 starts. And then, on Dec. 13 of that year, things really started to crumble when MLB released the findings of an independent investigation into the use of steroids in baseball. The Mitchell Report fingered Clemens as a user of PEDs, with evidence from his long-time personal trainer Brian McNamee. Clemens’s close friend Andy Pettitte was also named in the report. Two days later, Pettitte released a statement admitting that he’d used human growth hormone, given to him by McNamee, to recover from an elbow injury. With his legacy on the line, Clemens went on the offensive, launching lawsuits, holding press conferences, posting a YouTube video proclaiming his innocence. Everything he’d accomplished after he first encountered McNamee in 1998, when he was with the Toronto Blue Jays, was questioned. Former Phillies and Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who’d idolized Clemens, told the press that if his hero couldn’t clear his name, he should be forced to return the four Cy Young Awards he won while he was alleged to have been using PEDs. Clemens was hauled before Congress to testify in a nationally televised hearing. By this time, Pettitte had already given sworn testimony that Clemens had told him he’d used HGH. Still Clemens denied the accusations. He denied, denied, denied, as baseball history put an asterisk next to his name.
And that’s how we got here.
ThE ATLANTIC LEAGUE of Professional Baseball is an independent minor league with eight teams that operate mostly out of the Northeast. Players make between $1,500 to $3,000 a month to play in towns like Lancaster, Camden and Somerset. Most of the guys have played some kind of pro ball from single-A to the majors. The average player is in his late 20s. Among the former big leaguers with the Skeeters are Jason Lane, Tim Redding and Scott Kazmir—a two-time all-star who led the American League in strikeouts in 2007. This is no place for rising stars. This is where the fire fades away.
Getting Clemens in a Skeeters jersey was Gary Gaetti’s idea. The journeyman third baseman turned Sugar Land manager called Clemens in April to ask about signing Clemens’s 25-year-old son Koby as a catcher. “Hey, you can come pitch for me whenever you want,” Gaetti said, leaving a message on Clemens’s phone. “Heck, I’ll offer you a contract right now. Even if you just want to come out and pitch one inning.” Koby signed a minor-league contract with the Blue Jays, but Clemens and Gaetti went back and forth for a couple of months regarding the Rocket’s return. Then, in June, Clemens was acquitted of charges that he lied to Congress. The family wept on the stairs of the courthouse, feeling like the Clemens name was finally vindicated. A couple of weeks later, Clemens called Gaetti. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Clemens signed a regular contract with the Skeeters, putting him on the high end of the league’s pay scale. With the sporting world losing its collective mind speculating what the 50-year-old was up to, he pitched three-and-a-third scoreless innings against the Bridgeport Bluefish. He went golfing a few days later, and decided he was ready to pitch again. This time the Skeeters succeeded in picking up Koby, who’d just finished his season with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Jays’ double-A affiliate. ESPN promptly signed on to air this potentially touching family moment live.
On game day, Clemens and his son arrive at 3:30 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game, in a white-and-gold Ford F-250 King Ranch with a KBY22 licence plate. A cubby has been cleared out for Clemens in the locker room, marked with “Rocket #21” written in black marker on masking tape—the same temporary name tag given to each player on the team, a testament to the transient reality of the independent leagues. Stacks of fan mail—“Attn: Roger Clemens, Sugar Land Skeeters”—are piled inside. (“It’s been pouring in,” says the team’s office administrator.)
Clemens had received the royal treatment earlier in the week when he flew down to York, Penn., with members of the team’s ownership group for a media session and luncheon with sponsors. But he quickly becomes one of the boys in the clubhouse. “How we doing? How we doing?” Clemens asks as he walks around the room. “This is Roger Clemens,” thinks catcher Matt Hagen. “This. Is. Roger. Clemens.”
Just after 5:15, the Skeeters emerge from an opening underneath the stands in right field for a team photo. The clubhouse is off-limits to the press today, so photographers and reporters chase after Clemens and his son as they walk across the field. With ass cheeks clenched and chests puffed out, Roger and Koby push ahead as though they don’t notice the middle-aged men falling over themselves to get a shot. A head shorter than his dad, Koby looks like a well-practised Mini-Me version of the Rocket. Everyone ignores the rest of the Skeeters after the photo. “Let’s get out of the sun,” Koby says to his dad, as more frantic shots are snapped. They pause for some pictures next to a Roger Clemens Foundation banner on the right-field wall, then disappear into the media-free zone.
At 5:30, Clemens meets with the team’s catchers and a few of the pitchers to go over the Long Island lineup: “How much does he crowd the plate?” Clemens asks. “Should I go inside? Outside?” He runs his game plan by the Skeeters’ regular backstop, Octavio Martinez, and asks starter Jason Lane for advice on each hitter.
At around six, Clemens’s smile disappears. “You can see the look on his face,” Hagen says. “He’s preparing for the game. It’s not time to talk to him.” Clemens walks through a door in the back of the clubhouse, beside the couch and television, into the weight room. He is silent, ready to remind the world exactly who he is.
This is hardly the World Series in 1999 or 2000—or even 2001, when the Yankees lost a four-peat bid to Arizona in game seven with Clemens on the mound—but you wouldn’t know it from the Skeeter faithful. The green seats of Constellation Field are almost entirely full, save a row of five seats right behind the home dugout, on which Swatson, the Skeeters’ furry green monster mascot, dances and harasses and flicks the noses of spectators who are otherwise minding their own business.
After the anthem, the field is cleared for an exclusive ESPN interview with Clemens. He answers a few questions along the first-base line, shakes the reporter’s hand and marches to the mound. “Alrrright,” the game announcer blasts over the speakers. “We’re about to go LIVE across the nation!”
The first three batters go down quickly—ground out, ground out, pop out—with one wild pitch that makes the stadium go “Whoa!” in alarming unison. “Come on! Go get ’em!” Clemens shouts as he walks back to the Skeeters dugout while fans yell: “Roger! Roger! Rocket!” He doesn’t look up.
Thousands are on their feet in the second inning chanting “Bur-ger! Bur-ger! Bur-ger!” at Clemens. A local fast-food joint is giving out free burgers if Clemens strikes out Ducks DH Brandon Sing, and Sing’s behind in the count 0-2. The burger chants grow louder as Clemens stares into Koby’s mitt. Having caught the six-foot-five Sing with two cutters outside, Clemens goes inside. Sing whiffs. Free burgers. The place goes mad. “I had some idea what he was going to throw, having watched him in the big leagues,” Sing, 31, says later. “But once you get in the box it’s a little different.”
On the mound for the Ducks, Randy Keisler thinks about the past. The 36-year-old was a rookie with the Yankees when he first met Clemens, whose poster he had on his wall growing up. Clemens welcomed the shy, star-struck 24-year-old to the Bronx Bombers, and became a mentor of sorts. That year, in 2000, the Yankees won the World Series. This is about as far from Yankee Stadium as you can get, but Keisler will take the reunion. Earlier in the day, Clemens took him aside and encouraged him to work out harder and get a better agent. “I want to get a recording of this,” Keisler says of tonight’s game. “It’ll be a good memory.”
In the fourth inning, “Deep in the Heart of Texas” blasts over the speakers. The fans stand up and clap in rhythm. Clemens throws an inside splitter to Bryant Nelson, the Ducks’ third baseman. Nelson connects but the ball dribbles down the third-base line. Clemens hustles his six-foot-four, 240-lb. frame to the ball, and it seems like he might tumble. But he manages to keep his balance, bare-handing the ball and firing it to first. From the bleachers it’s clear that Nelson is safe by half a second at least. “Out!” shouts umpire David Mills. No one says a word. Except for Nelson. “TV game too big for you or something?” Nelson chirps. “He got you,” Mills replies. Back in Crossett, Ark., Nelson’s mother sees it clearly; ESPN shows the replay over and over. “At least you got on Baseball Tonight,” she tells him afterward. It’s the closest Nelson has been to the majors since playing one season with the Red Sox in 2002. “Hopefully I’ll face him in the big leagues next year,” he says.
With two outs in the top of the fifth, Gaetti walks out to the mound to take Clemens out. The fans are up and clapping. Koby hugs his dad. Clemens tips his hat to the Long Island dugout and walks to the Skeeters’ bench glancing up at the fans. A line of sweat—or maybe a tear?—on his left cheek is caught by the lights beaming down.
At the end of the eighth inning, Clemens and Toby Keith leave the dugout together. Fans rush down. Keith stops and signs at least a dozen autographs. The Rocket stands about 10 feet back, just staring at Keith for a minute as the fans call out to him. He seems oblivious. Then he waves awkwardly, making a rock-on sign with his pinkie and index figure. Keith joins him and they disappear under the stands, flanked by police officers.
In the Skeeters’ clubhouse, following the team’s 4–0 win, outfielder Steve Moss stands on a chair and demands attention. He holds up a replica WWE title belt that is given to the MVP after every game. “When you walked in with those freshly frosted tips,” Moss announces as he hands the belt to Clemens, “I knew you were ready to go tonight.” The entire room erupts. After five years of fighting against allegations that he cheated the game he loved, Clemens is back—one of the boys, the star of the team.
Later, long after the lights go down, Clemens greets the press. He’s asked if he can imagine a better ending. “Well, there’s been some great endings,” he replies. Will there be any more? “There could be,” he says. “You never know.”
And so the question remains: What is this all about? Ego? Love of the game? Or simply not wanting your last moments on national TV to take place on the steps of a courthouse? As always, Clemens leaves the answers vague and the future open—drawing out his legacy like a never-ending story. He continues to work to be more than that chubby boy with a slow fastball, more than that community-college pitcher who believes he’s a star; to reinforce his seven Cy Youngs and two World Series rings; to be more than a man who was acquitted but remains one of baseball’s tarnished names, no longer a shoo-in to join the legends of the game in Cooperstown. So he lives to be the Rocket, blazing into smoke but unable to drift away. Because of all the chapters in an icon’s story, Clemens still can’t face this, the hardest part: the end.
This article originally appeared in Sportsnet Magazine.