Coors Field Unworthy of Clemens Feat
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The problem with watching Roger Clemens pitch these days is that he belongs to history, rather than the Yankees.
Yesterday, Clemens had his second chance to win his 350th game, and for the second time, he didn’t. This was a good thing, at least in the sense that the win didn’t take place in an interleague game in Colorado’s ridiculous Coors Field. Such an achievement should not come in a game against a team wearing purple pinstripes. That’s a more discriminating view of things than the Yankees or their supporters can afford to take, though. For them the important numbers were five and three, the first being the number of teams ahead of the Yankees in the American League wild card race, and the second being the number of games a fairly unimpressive Rockies team won in a three game set.
More important even than those numbers was the fact that Clemens, maybe for the first time, looked truly old. In the third inning, Willy Taveras bunted straight back to the mound and Clemens couldn’t even take a stab at the ball, and that was bad, but the really ominous sign was in the second, when Troy Tulowitzki knocked a high fastball into left center for a solo home run. It was a high, rising shot, knocked squarely and well-earned. The worst about it was that the for more than 20 years, Clemens has thrown exactly that pitch to exactly that location for swinging strikes and weak fly outs. It looked like it was the pitch he wanted to make; there just wasn’t enough on it. Clemens hasn’t had his old fastball for years now, but if fastball hitters can outright beat him when he puts it where he wants to, when he wants to do it, he’s not going to be an ace or anything close to it, and the Yankees aren’t going to make the playoffs.
Still, the Yankees’ playoff hopes seem small in scale next to what Clemens is about to achieve. Clemens is about to become the first pitcher to win 350 games since Warren Spahn did it in 1963, with one Joe Torre behind the plate. That’s an awfully long time, and even that doesn’t properly frame what Clemens has done. When Spahn won his 350th game, it had been 35 years since Pete Alexander did so, 40 years since Walter Johnson did so, and 49 years since Christy Mathewson did so. These four are the only modern era pitchers to win that many games. So rather than simply saying that Clemens will be the first pitcher to reach 350 in 44 years, we might say he’ll be the second in 79 years — and he, of course, has played through the greatest and most sustained hitter’s era in history, in a five-man rotation, spending nearly all his time pitching in the league with designated hitters, in an integrated sport. It’s on the short list for the most impressive things anyone has ever done in the sport, and personally I find it far more impressive than Barry Bonds’s run at Hank Aaron’s career home run mark.
Consider this, just to put 350 in a bit of context. Clemens has thrown 537 complete games’ worth of innings in his career, and earned 529 decisions. Spahn threw 583 complete games’ worth of innings, and earned 608 decisions, partly because pitchers lasted deeper into games in his day for various reasons, and partly because he made 85 relief appearances. If Clemens earned decisions at the rate Spahn did, and maintained the same .660 winning percentage, he’d be sitting at 370 wins right now, just three behind the 373 that both Mathewson and Alexander won, four wins away from third place on the all time lists.
When a player has reached these heights, it can make it hard to appreciate them in their time. Like Bonds, although less so because he’s playing for a team that’s at least nominally in contention, Clemens stands outside the actual game as it’s played. What business does Troy Tulowitzki have hitting home runs off a man whose win total is arguably more impressive than those of Pete Alexander and Christy Mathewson? Why is someone named Willy Taveras bunting at the mound and disgracing the old man? These players should be deferentially making outs to show their respect. It seems preposterous that Clemens, like Greg Maddux, finds himself in such normal situations. People to whom statues will one day be erected in honor don’t fit in actual ballparks where cans of beer are cracked and grass is mowed.
On some level, this is probably why people are annoyed by the comically generous strike zone Clemens gets from umpires, and the farcically generous contracts he’s earned. It’s one thing for a player to stand above the game this way, and another for there to be tangible, objective proof of his doing so. That grates. It isn’t, though, that Clemens is a boor; it’s that he’s bigger than the actual games in which he plays. A place like Coors Field seems unworthy of what he’s done and what he still does, even as he’s slowed so much. Perhaps yesterday’s loss is for the best; in a fading season, something as outsized as a 350th win probably ought to take place somewhere as outsized as Yankee Stadium. May the old man take a no decision in his next start in Baltimore!
