You know I'm talking about the Rocket aka Rust Bucket Roger. I hope Uncle Drayton is prepared to make the plunge! I'd hate to see him go back to where he's not loved...aka Boston or New Yawk. ______________________________________ Has there ever been a more visible "retired" guy than Roger Clemens? Heck, you see the man more now than when he was actually playing. Over the last couple of weeks, it seems as if the only place you haven't seen him is co-hosting with Regis. Roger Clemens Jeff Gross/Getty Images Clemens was last seen pitching for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. So we see no convincing evidence that the Rocket is ready to pack it in. He's just positioning himself as the greatest midseason free agent in the history of any sport. As confident as the Astros' people might be that he's heading back to Houston, one baseball man who knows Clemens says this time it won't be about convenience. It will be about one thing: winning. "Roger isn't going to come back and just pitch for a paycheck," this longtime baseball man said. "Winning will have to be a major incentive for him to pitch again ... because he'll be in the highest [midseason] demand of any pitcher ever. So I really think you won't see him until the All-Star break, so he can filter out the pretenders from the contenders. "I really think this is it. If he does pitch another year, this will be it. So if he pitches this year, it will be for a winning team. If he's only coming back for 2½-3 months, it's not as big a deal for him to be away from his family, because he can tell them it's just for a short period period of time, and then that's it. So that's the way I look at it: The shorter the term, the more likely he'll be to go to any of those [contending] teams. The longer the term, the less likely that is and the more likely it is he'll go back to Houston." But don't discount the money factor here, either. Clemens and his agents, Randy and Alan Hendricks, have shrewdly positioned themselves to set off a crazed June-July auction among the Yankees, Red Sox and the state of Texas. And the hometown-discount rate will not be in effect. If you peel away Clemens' comments last week after he just happened to stop by the Rangers and Astros' openers, his most revealing quote was this one: "The going rate is the going rate. That's the bottom line." And the going rate will start at eight figures.
At $3+ per gallon maybe Steinbrenner can induce him with an oil well for the Hummer George gave him when he retired.