A tale of two pitchers

It is not lost on me that in my time on earth I have been smitten by two large Texas-bred pitchers on the Boston Red Sox, twenty years apart. In the mid-eighties I was enthralled by Roger Clemens, now it is Josh Beckett. When you have been a baseball fan as long as I have you see similarities, glimpse ghosts of legends. When I watch Beckett pitch I see a young Rocket, dominating, fiery, fist-pumping and hitter-taunting. On the surface, yes, they are alike. But how they handle their notoriety? Quite, quite different.

Pat Jordan, a former Sports Illustrated staffer, wrote an eye-opening piece on Clemens in 2001. This year, he writes about trying to get an interview with Beckett for Slate and getting shot down. For comparison, an excerpt from the Clemens piece:

A French dilettante once said, ''I am such an egotist that if I were to write about a chair I'd find some way to write about myself.'' Clemens's egotism is more childlike and innocent. He doesn't realize that he sees himself as the center of his small universe, at the center of every story he tells. The man having the heart attack becomes a bit player; the point of the story is the interruption of Clemens's "good run."

From the Beckett article:

But, still, I thought it was a shame Josh wouldn't let me profile him in the Times. I had a long lunch with him a few years ago, when he was with the Florida Marlins, and came away thinking he was an interesting young man. At the time, and even now, Beckett had a reputation for being a surly, hard-ass, rednecked, Texas country boy in the way of old-timey ballplayers. But the Josh I met over lunch was smart, caustic, funny, sophisticated, and a much deeper and more nuanced man than his public gave him credit for. I would have loved to have burnished his image, to have shown his fans that side of him in a profile. But it wasn't to be. His fans then lost an opportunity to know the real Josh Beckett.

As a long-ago camera commercial once proclaimed, image is everything. On the surface, it's easy to say that Clemens and Beckett are cut from the same mold, but in reading these articles it's plain that they are not. Since everything has broken about Clemens many have asked me--how do you defend him? How can you still like him? They're not easy questions to answer, but I think I can say this--Clemens was after the brass ring, wanting to be mentioned in the same breath as Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton. When he was younger Beckett said the same things, but as he matured he's become quieter, tougher on himself. Clemens merely looked at stuff like bad games as roadbumps on his way to the Hall of Fame.

I don't think Roger Clemens is a bad person. I think he got caught up in his own hype. I also think Josh Beckett, who has claimed Clemens as a hero numerous times, is watching Clemens and making notes to himself--"don't end up like that."

I read the news today, oh boy ...

If you'd asked any baseball fan this time last year if they believed there was any chance that Roger Clemens would avoid the Hall of Fame, you probably would have gotten a does-not-compute look, even from those who hated him. "Dude," they'd say. "It's fuckin' Clemens. Seven Cy Youngs, over three hundred wins. Are you high? First ballot, no problem."

Now? Clemens is impaled on his own ego like a fish on the end of a harpoon, wriggling desperately, yelling louder and louder in hopes that he can somehow drown out the voices who call him a fraud, a cheater, the voices that hold the growing ring of truth.

Nothing has been proven. Not the steroid use, not the perjury, not the decade-long extramarital affair with a batshit crazy country singer. It's all from unnamed "sources," those who have reason to drag him down to protect themselves. But the Rocket has been red-glaring all over the place, basically screaming "I'm Roger Fucking Clemens, how DARE you say shit like this about me?!" As the cameras rolled in the Congressional hearing room he casually threw his wife, the mother of his four sons all preposterously burdened with names starting with the letter K (strikeout code) under the bus, claiming that she was the one using human growth hormone, not him. And Debbie Clemens, perfectly blonde and groomed and beautiful as only professional athletes' wives can be, smiled blandly as she listened to her husband of twenty-three years trash her, instead of freaking out and giving him a cockpunch like he deserved.

I still remember seeing Roger pitch for the first time in 1986 in Yankee Stadium, being in awe of the screaming fastball, the bad-assed attitude. My friends would tease me about being a Yankees fan but being madly in love with a member of the Boston Red Sox. One of the happiest days of my life was the day he signed with the Yankees for the first time. I didn't delude myself that he was a god who walked among the mortals; I'd heard too many stories about him being an insufferable prick, his "money uber alles" mindset. But to watch him pitch was watching history, knowing I was looking at the best of the best. To see him now, his face lined, his mouth set grimly as he walks past the media, makes me sad. If Congress' case goes through, he stands a better chance of going to prison than the oft-maligned Barry Bonds, the Pete Rose of his era.

Somehow I don't think that was the legacy he wanted to leave.