The Roger Clemens Saga: Will He Ever Retire?

The Roger Clemens saga continues into this baseball off-season with even the best of baseball experts unsure of what Clemens will do. Clemens is now 44 years old and he is still showing no signs of decline even at such an old age. His best friend and pitcher Andy Pettite signed with the New York Yankees and some experts say that Clemens could decide to resign in pinstripes.

Whatever Clemens decides, one thing is sure: It will definitely be to pitch only the second half of the season and the playoffs if the team makes it. Clemens is a very family oriented man and enjoys seeing his children play baseball. One of his older sons is currently with the Houston Astros farm team.

Roger Clemens has had an amazing career in baseball. He has pitched for 22 years and came from the University of Texas where he first began to dominate hitters. Two years ago he made 22 million dollars to pitch the entire season for the Astros which was the richest contract ever given to a pitcher. For his career, Roger Clemens has a 3.10 Earned Run Average. He has 348 Wins, 4604 strikeouts which is the best ever.

Last year he played for the Astros in the second half of the season and only had a record of 7-6 in part because his Astros team got shutout in many of his pitching starts. Clemens still ended the season with a 2.30 ERA which was the best in the major leagues. Despite Clemens losing velocity on his fastball and striking out hitters far less frequently, Clemens has still been able to dominate major league hitters because of his nasty slider and high intelligence for the game of baseball.

Although it is still possible that Clemens will return to the Houston Astros because his family lives in Texas, rumor has it that Clemens wants to play for a winner and a team that will score runs for him when he is pitching. Roger Clemens has not been happy with the course that the Houston Astros franchise is taking after his buddy Andy Pettite signed with the Yankees. Yankee insiders are hoping that the signing of Pettite will convince Clemens to sign with the Yankees as a free agent for the second half of the season. The Yankees will probably offer Clemens the most amount of money to pitch for them in any kind of bidding war for his services. The allure of the Yankees is that Clemens will almost certainly be guaranteed at a playoff birth and a chance to pitch in the post season for another World Series win.

Clemens has won the CY Young award for the leagues best pitcher 7 times as well as winning the Most Valuable Player award in 1986.