Clemens walks, but does his path lead to Cooperstown? |
The biggest question of all, of course, is whether or not Clemens is a Hall of Famer. The answer is yes, though that doesn’t mean he will end up in Cooperstown. Owning the credentials and boasting the accolades is only one requirement at the doors of Baseball’s home of eternal glory. The other one, it seems, is total transparency, a sense of openness and forthrightness that leaves a player’s past free of haze and skepticism. Especially lately, this second qualification has come to supersede the first, and linkage to steroids has come to mean guiltiness. Just ask Rafael Palmeiro or Mark McGwire. This newer, more ethically driven evaluation process asks not just what the player has accomplished, but the way in which he has done it. And thus players with Hall of Fame numbers aren’t going to the Hall of Fame. Even with Monday’s acquittal, it looks increasingly like Clemens will end up in this unenviable barrel of “The Best Ballplayers who aren’t in Cooperstown.” A dark, grey cloud forever hangs over these men that rains anytime the voters come around, splashing dark drops of ignominy and immorality on their ballots. Like a Tim Wakefield fastball, they’re hard to miss.
So Clemens most likely won’t achieve baseball immortality, but the voters should take a long, hard look. Not at the years after Clemens has been accused of taking steroids (1998-2007), but at the years before it (1984-1997). That pitcher, and that man, are worthy of the Hall of Fame.
In the first 14 years of his career, when Clemens was just another clean-shaven, stirrup-wearing man-child from Texas, the robust righty simply dominated his meek competition. The mound was his throne, his sniper tower if you will, and after 9 innings of the kind of blistering velocity that leaves the catcher pleading for changeups, the batters box was his as well. And 9 innings is no aggrandizement: from 1984-1997, Clemens racked up 109 complete games. To break it down into smaller numbers, Roger went the distance once every third start for 14 years. And to substantiate that further, today’s leader in “complete game rate” is R.A. Dickey, who finishes ballgames about once every 5th start, and who is so bewilderingly, logic-defying-ly good, we don’t even know if its fair to measure Roger against him. (This also says something about Dickey, that it is now unfair to weigh Roger Clemens’ achievements against his). But never mind the wins, strikeouts and formal honors, that stat alone is worthy of Hall of Fame nomination.
The Rocket earned his name. He pitched hard, he pitched mean, and he pitched meaner. His stuff garnered the kind of praise you love to see on a prospect report: explosive, electric, forceful, dominant. Roger knew it, and after a few 98 mile per hour heaters up around the chin, the opposing batters knew it too. He took the mound with a definite chip on his shoulder, a terrifying self-confidence, an inner belief that he was better than you, stronger than you, and more powerful than you, and the way he looked down on hitters from atop the mound only cemented this sentiment. The guy was less afraid to pitch hitters inside than Mo Vaughn was to crowd the plate. He also owned one of the most devastating splitters the game has ever seen, which dropped out of the strike zone like a stricken fighter jet, and sent hitters flying back to the dugout. Clemens’ fastball-splitter combination was a 1-2 punch that Muhammad Ali would have been proud of.
His stuff was so voltaic, so overwhelming, that in his first 14 seasons (as a clean competitor), Clemens wrote a Hall of Fame resume that most pitchers couldn’t script in an entire career. It rivals that of every pitcher in Cooperstown town, tops many, and embarrasses a few. Of the 69 hurlers in the Hall of Fame, Clemens, circa 1984-’97, ranks above 23 in wins (213), 36 in shutouts (41), 60 in strikeouts (2,882), and 61 in win-loss percentage (.645). What’s more, the lion’s share of his laurels came during this steroid-free chapter of his career, when he won 4 Cy Young Awards, 1 MVP Award (a feat repeated by a fellow pitcher only twice since ’86) and was a 6-time All Star. If he had retired in 1997, before Brian McNamee allegedly injected him with HGH, Clemens would have been the closest thing to a lock for the Hall of Fame.
But the voters have spoken. They have made their position known, loud and clear. There is no separating one part of a career from another, or one part of a man from another. And there is nothing the federal law can do to sway their opinion. If a man is accused of using steroids, he used them. And if he used them for one year, he might as well have done so his entire career. That’s simply the way they look at it. It’s sad, really, that such an illustrious, decorated path can be washed away by one juvenile mistake, and leave not a footprint in Cooperstown. But for Clemens, that’s the harsh reality of it all, and it’s a disappointment he is prepared for. In a congressional hearing in 2008, he despairingly acknowledged, “I’m never going to have my name restored.”
It was a perceptive remark from The Rocket. For though he may deserve it, it sure feels like his Hall of Fame chances are about to be blasted off into space, into continual abortive orbit on the voters’ ballots, where they will eventually sputter out and fade into the footnotes of some baseball almanac.
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