NPR: Roger's Back with the Yankees

Roger's Back with the Yankees

On Sunday afternoon, as my family and I drove from our old home in the Boston area to our new abode near D.C., I happened to pick up the New York Yankees game on my radio as we motored down the New Jersey Turnpike. As a longtime Red Sox fan, hearing the voice of Yankees broadcaster John Sterling was a little like listening to Tokyo Rose -- you wanted to listen, but you felt wrong doing it.

Then suddenly, the radio exploded. Roger was back! Roger Clemens, that is. Appearing deus ex machina-like in the box of owner George Steinbrenner, Roger told the drooling masses at Yankee Stadium that he was coming back to pitch for the team. You would have thought Jesus had appeared descending on a cloud the way Sterling's broadcast partner Suzyn Waldman was screaming. Later, I heard a WCBS announcer say that the Yankees could expect a return to the World Series now.

Ah, no.

Coming from Boston, I'm quite used to fans making wildly unjustified assumptions about the effect one player can have on an entire team's season. Until 2004, Red Sox fans were doing it almost every year. It's weird to see it happening to New York fans now. Oh, how the times have changed.

Clemens is a good pitcher. He will make the Yankees a better team, absolutely. But the problems that are plaguing the team go way beyond anything one player can solve. Pitching is still the thing that the Yankees need the most. True, they've got Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Clemens now, along with the truly talented Chien-Ming Wang and the potentially great Phil Hughes, once he gets back from injury. But those first three pitchers are no longer spring chickens, and baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.

This is one reason why Clemens asked for all the special provisions -- like not traveling with the team -- that have actually generated a little bit of controversy even before the Rocket steps on the mound, which will probably happen in late May or early June. Clemens also has a prorated $28 million contract. An ESPN announcer calculated that to be about $7,500 a pitch. (I knew I should have learned to throw a slider.)

As for the Red Sox, well, they would have taken Clemens, too. You can never have enough pitching, as they say. Curt Shilling, always saying what's on his mind, said that the Sox don't really need Clemens. He's taken lots of grief for that comment, but I find myself in agreement with him. If there is one thing the Sox do have, it's pitching.

11:17 AM ET | 05- 8-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Wait, so you mean that Boston Red Sox fans' hysteria about unproven Japanese import Daisuke Matsusaka doesn't count as "making wildly unjustified assumptions about the effect one player can have on an entire team's season?"

Ultimately, one of the things that I've found incredibly disingenuous about the entire Clemens signing has been the pointing of fingers at the Yankees and saying "bad and unprecedented." Baseball is a collaborative of 32 teams, each of whom have made deals that have been "unprecedented" on some level or another, be they the "lifetime" contracts given to the likes of Dan Quisenberry by the Royals in the 1980s to the posting fee of $50 million spent by Boston just to negotiate with Matsusaka. Some of these are good, and some are bad. One thing is clear, though - if it works, other teams and players will try it.

The American League East is a lot like the cold war (but with more drunken fistfights, no doubt) - it's a constant race between the US and Soviets (in my worldview, being a Bronxite from birth, I view the Red Sox as Russians and manager Terry Francona as a pseudo-Brezhnev) to outdo each other.

Odds are? Neither will win, and baseball fans (and the baseball media) will remember what they should for the entire year - that there are other teams out there just as worthy of discussion and dissemination.

Sent by Dan Dunford | 4:02 PM ET | 05-09-2007

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