The Rocket is Back
Seven time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens and the Yankees announced at a press conference on Sunday that they have come to an agreement for the remainder of the 2007 season.
Clemens and the Yankees couldn’t get a deal together last season, the money was there, but Roger wanted stipulations in the contract stating that he did not have to travel with the team if he was not scheduled to pitch. Yankee manager Joe Torre simply wouldn’t make that concession so Clemens went to play ball in his home town of Houston.
Well that was then and this is now.., So far in ‘07 virtually all of the Yankees pitching staff, with the exception of Andy Petite, has been injured. The struggling Yanks sit 5.5 games behind the Red Sox and have been under some serious fire from the media and the fans.
Torre and the Yankees needed to do something, so they made the travel concessions and offered the Rocket 28 million dollars for the remainder of the season. So with more than thirty games already gone, that means Roger will probably start about 22 or 23 games during the regular season if he can manage to stay healthy - for those of us who aren’t into doing the math, that’s more than a million dollars per start…
If the Yankees pull it all together once Clemens comes into the fold, if he wins 17 games and leads them to yet another World Series Championship then I suppose this will have been worth it. But if they continue to falter, if Roger begins to show signs of his age and only manages three or four wins, if the pinstripes fail to make the playoffs - then this will be the biggest waste of money in Yankee history, and that is saying a lot.
Rocket, Yankess, baseball, pinstripes, Roger Clemens
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