Forty years ago the Boston Red Sox came as close to winning a World Series that a team can without claiming the Commissioner’s Trophy. Led by a then 23-year old phenom -the AL MVP, Cy Young Award winner & All Star Game MVP- Roger Clemens and the ’86 Red Sox, remain one of the most discussed (and debated) in team history.
ROGER CLEMENS wasn’t a trust fund prospect, not a David Clyde.
Clemens was selected by the New York Mets out of a Houston area high school as the 315th pick in the 1981 amateur draft, but did not sign.
Eight years earlier, Clyde was the first overall pick in the 1973 draft, also from a Houston high school–in front of eventual Hall of Famers Robin Yount and Dave Winfield- by the Texas Rangers. Just three weeks later he made his major league debut—a five inning win against the Minnesota Twins.
Unlike David Clyde, at age 18 Clemens was still physically developing. So in 1981 he went unsigned and was directed to San Jacinto Junior College to continue his development.
From there, he transferred to the University of Texas, winning the championship game of the 1983 College World Series -which capped off a 13-5 season where he fanned 151 batters over 166 innings with a 3.04 ERA- before being selected by the Boston Red Sox in the 1983 draft.
Not that he was a glamorous pick then either. There were 11 pitchers selected in that draft before Clemens was snatched off the board at number 19.
He wasn’t, in fact, even Boston’s preferred selection.
In those days, certain members of the media were allowed to sit in on draft rooms, and in 1983, I was there in the thick of things with the Sox in their war room.
The pitcher they coveted was a slight righthander from the University of Michigan named Rich Stoll, selected by the Montreal Expos three slots earlier at 16; prompting a draft prep book and briefcase tossed in angst against the wall.
Clyde won 18 games in his career; remembered as “the cautionary tale” in MLB annals to not rush players to the big leagues too soon.
Stoll never made the majors; and appeared with the Expos in the spring training of 1995 as a replacement player.
In his third season and 39th major league start, eight months after a serious operation for a torn labrum, Clemens notched his career 19th win—one more than David Clyde and Rich Stoll combined.
In his next start, April 29, 1986 -40 years to the day of the release of the cover story you are now reading- he set a major league record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariner batters (without allowing a walk).
That start highlighted a season which saw Clemens register a major league best 24 wins to only four defeats, while posting league leading numbers in ERA (2.48) and WHIP (0.97).
Winner of his first 14 decisions during the ‘86 campaign, Clemens did not lose a game until July.
He was the dominant leader of a Red Sox pennant-winning season that earned him the Cy Young, MVP, and All-Star Game MVP awards, the last of which he stood as the starting pitcher for the American League, tossing three perfect innings in his hometown of Houston.
That start on April 29th, 1986 was history: 20 strikeouts, 0 walks, defining his career.
The winningest pitchers born after Pearl Harbor are Greg Maddux (355) and Clemens (354).
Roger won seven Cy Young Awards, most period. He is the winningest pitcher not in the Hall of Fame, despite never -like Barry Bonds- never once failing a drug test.
At age 63, now a father of two major league infielders, Clemens recalls:
“Maddux once told me we pitched very much alike. We threw strikes first. It was always about command for both of us.”
20 strikeouts, 0 walks. Twice in his career.
704 Wins, 11 Cy Young Awards, Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens.
Following his June 1983 signing, Clemens zoomed all the way from Class A Winter Haven in the Florida State League to clinching a AA Eastern League title with New Britian.
“I had just come from pitching in front of 20,000 in the College World Series,” Clemens remembers. “Three weeks later, I’m in Winter Haven pitching in front of 11 people. It’s easy to see who’s heckling you when there are only 11 folks in the crowd.”
The first season of professional baseball for the two-time collegiate All-American, saw him post a microscopic 1.33 ERA over 81 innings while registering 95 strikeouts against only twelve walks.
Along the way he stirred things up in a game with the Detroit Tigers’ Lakeland club when shortstop Mike Brumley —who played at Texas rival Oklahoma State- wiped out Roger’s Longhorn and Winter Haven teammate Spike Owen. Clemens, from the dugout steps, glared at Brumley and warned “You’ll get yours!”
Two days later, with Roger on the hill, several Lakeland batters heard 99 mph fastballs whistle high and tight by their ears, including Brumley who got drilled.
Scheduled for an early spring training outing in 1984, Clemens was set to face Detroit, his first start wearing the parent club Red Sox uniform. The Tigers, who trained 15 miles away in Lakeland, eventually won the ’84 World Series, amassing 104 wins with a tough, loaded roster that included Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Darrell Evans, Howard Johnson, Larry Parrish, and Chet Lemon among others.
Sparky Anderson, Tigers manager at the time, told Boston writers upon arrival at the Sox Winter Haven ballpark:
“I had to tell our players on the bus to stop talking about this Clemens guy. They were telling stories the whole ride about hitting some guy in Lakeland and how hard he throws. I got sick of hearing it and had to shut the bus up.”
Despite a very strong spring training, Clemens started the 1984 campaign in Pawtucket, blowing away AAA hitters during the first month of the season with a 1.91 ERA in 46 1/3 innings before receiving the call up for his major league debut in Cleveland on May 15.
“I thought I had a good chance of making the club out of spring training,” Clemens says. “The last day of cuts were April 1st -April Fools Day- and when I was called into (Red Sox manager) Ralph Houk’s office, he told me even though I had a dominant spring I was going to start the year in Pawtucket. I was waiting for the ‘April Fools’ part to come, but turns out he wasn’t joking.”
Once called up, Clemens made 20 starts in his rookie season, going 9-4, 4.32 ERA, then had his 1985 season cut short after only 15 starts (7-5, 3.29) submitting to the shoulder labrum operation.
His intense rehab work -a work ethic that would become a hallmark over his 24-year career- resulted in a spring comeback a mere eight months after the operation. In his fourth start of that ’86 season he did something no one had done before —struck out 20. More remarkable, he walked no one.
Watching the historic performance on that cool, windy night from the visitors dugout, Mariners manager Chuck Cottier compared his combination of strike-throwing and power velocity to Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson.
Clemens in many ways was a throwback pitcher, one of the last remaining from an era holding a similar makeup -and mindset- to the greats of generations before him.
As a kid he had opportunities to go out near the bullpen to watch (and listen to) Nolan Ryan, the preeminent power pitcher of that generation warm up.
On June 14th, 1974 two of those greats matched up on a warm summer evening in Anaheim. Ryan and the California Angels sat opposite Luis Tiant and the Red Sox
That night, Ryan threw a staggering 235 pitches over 13 innings, striking out 19 and walking 10. It is said his fastball was still hovering around triple digits well into the extra innings. Over 50 years later, Ryan is still angry manager Bobby Winkles took him out.
Tiant, meanwhile, is the last MLB starting pitcher in to pitch into the 15th inning (163 pitches) only to lose on an opposite field bloop in the 15th. It is safe to say ‘El Tiante’ will hold this title for the remainder of time.
Clemens went 24-4 during that historic 1986 season, good for Cy Young, MVP, and All-Star MVP honors. The trifecta also earned Roger the distinction of being the first player in MLB history garnering all three of those awards in the same season.
Ironically, Doc Gooden was 24-4 the previous season for the Mets, and the two squared off as starters in the AS Game in Houston.
When we were flying home together after the game Roger said to me:
“Getting to bat (which he hadn’t done because of the DH rule in the AL), especially against Gooden, made me realize how tough it is to hit a fastball.”
He then then started throwing his own fastball more frequently.
On June 29th, right before the trading deadline, the Red Sox sent Steve Lyons to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for veteran pitcher Tom Seaver. Soon in the far corner of the home clubhouse, Seaver was surrounded by Clemens and Bruce Hurst, soaking in any knowledge the future HOF hurler and 300+ game winner was offering.
“I was so young then, only 23, and Tom was 41, but he was still pretty special,” Clemens says. “I used to watch as he would change speeds, change locations and use both sides of the plate. Tom made a 17-inch plate into 24 inches.”
One Sunday afternoon at the end of a road trip in Texas, Clemens had a 2-0 lead in the eighth inning, before giving up a home run off the foul pole by Rangers backup catcher Gino Petralli.
Seaver, who had been home in Connecticut watching, got to the Red Sox clubhouse at four o’clock the next day. He walked straight to his locker, turned to Clemens, and said:
“What the (-_) were you throwing? The only thing Petralli could do is bale and hack at a ball inside, and you threw it there. Throw your fastball up and away and you’ll see what he’s thinking.”
Clemens never made the same mistake again.
The mistake he made after that though was not refusing to allow Sox manager John McNamara to relieve him in the fatal sixth game of that ’86 World Series.
Start with this: if Seaver hadn’t hurt his knee with two weeks left in the season, the Mets wouldn’t have won. Oil Can Boyd wouldn’t have started. The Mets weren’t beating Seaver in Shea Stadium, a mound no pitcher in MLB history ever won more games on.
“It sure would have been fun for (Seaver) to pitch in the World Series at Shea Stadium,” reflects Clemens. “That was his stomping grounds.”
In the bottom of the seventh inning in Game Six with the Red Sox holding a 3-2 lead, Clemens worked a stress free, 1-2-3 inning.
He was then due up in the top of the 8th with Dave Henderson on second and one out. Clemens at the time had allowed only four hits and the two runs, only one of them earned.
He had developed a couple of mild blisters that bled. When pitching coach Bill Fischer asked if he was OK—according to Fischer— Roger told him that all four hits were off of breaking balls that created the bleeding, but he could throw fastballs, which no Mets hitter had been able to locate and catch up to all night.
“He grabbed a bat and intended to hit,” Fisch emphasized.
McNamara decided to pinch hit Clemens for Mike Greenwell, who struck out, and the Sox eventually ended up leaving the bases loaded without adding an insurance run.
In the bottom half of the 8th, the Mets pushed the tying run across off of Calvin Scharaldi (Clemens former University of Texas teammate) and then -after regaining the lead on a 2-run HR by Henderson in the 10th– Boston dropped the game, 6-5, as the Mets scored three times in that fateful, history altering bottom half of the inning.
Would Clemens have closed out the final six outs in Game 6 the way Dick Radatz would have done had he pitched for a winning team? Hurst is among the many that believes so. Remember in the 10th inning, the Sox were a single out away.
Media members who took the elevator down in the tenth, before the game’s conclusion, were greeted when the door opened to the message:
“Congratulations, Boston Red Sox, 1986 World Champions, Bruce Hurst, MVP.”
In a later Bob Costas interview, McNamara, amidst heavy scrutiny, claimed Clemens begged out.
In spring training, 1999, after Clemens was traded to the New York Yankees, Fischer -then a coach with Atlanta- did a video interview with me in Braves camp. In that interview, Fischer vehemently denies that Clemens asked out, and off the record told me that McNamara had taken much grief for pulling Clemens in favor of Schiraldi.
Working on a special feature of Game 6 and the ’86 World Series for Sports Illustrated, I sat down with more than 15 Red Sox players who were part of that game and series at a medical center in Worcester. The conversations and revelations transpired were not something McNamara would have wanted to witness (think Grady Little and Pedro Martinez, 2003).
I wrote about it in The Globe, McNamara threatened to sue me, but when he learned I had the Fischer tape, I never heard of that lawsuit again.
McNamara was fired at the 1988 AS break after some personal issues arose. Morgan Magic ensued.
Following the devastating WS loss, the Red Sox chose to renew Clemens during the spring of ’87 at close to the minimum salary, per the owners-controlled system at the time. Roger walked out of camp with his Hendricks Brothers agents. GM Lou Gorman’s triumphant comment was “the sun will sign, the sun will set and I will have lunch.”
Back on the advice and consent of the Commissioner’s Office, Roger turned in his second consecutive Cy Young season in 1987, starting 36 games, while accumulating 281 1/3 innings. He had a 20-9 record/ 2.91 ERA and fanned 256 for the year. Despite leading the league in wins, complete games (18), shutouts (7) and W.A.R (9.4) he also felt he wasn’t quite what he should be as the Sox stumbled to 78-84 and fifth in the AL East just one year after winning the American League pennant.
He won 18 and 17 games respectively over the next two seasons, posting similar numbers to those of ’87. Following the firing of McNamara, the Sox did reclaim the AL East in ’88 with a 46-31 second half resurgence under Joe Morgan, before being swept by a mighty Oakland Athletics team in the ALCS.
Clemens grit and determination were on full display the night of July 25, 1988. On a searing-hot night (game-time temperature of 100 degrees) in Texas, Clemens fired 161 pitches, striking out 14 Rangers in a three-hit complete game shutout. It was a throwback performance worthy of comparisons to Ryan and Tiant.
Then in 1990, Roger was 21-6, 1.93 ERA but the team, despite again capturing the AL East flag, once again got swept in the ALCS by Oakland in a series best remembered for home plate umpire Terry Cooney ejecting Clemens in the second inning of Game 4 for arguing balls and strikes. The Sox were slowly falling apart.
Clemens would win his third and final Cy Young Award in Boston in 1991 tallying 18 wins while securing his second of three consecutive ERA titles (2.62) in the AL, (he won seven total over the course of his career) but the Red Sox again missed the postseason.
They went from Joe Morgan to Butch Hobson in managers, Lou Gorman to Dan Duquette as general manager, finished first only in 1995 before Clemens left as a free agent after the 1996 season.
On September 18th, 1996 -in his third to last start in a Red Sox uniform and more than ten years since tossing his masterpiece on April 29th, 1986- Clemens threw a second 20 strikeout, no walk game. If anyone thought he was, as Duquette said—although didn’t really mean—in the “twilight of his career” Roger made sure one of the last memories of him in Boston was going to be the same as one of the first: 20K – 0BB.
That offseason he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and in two seasons was 41-33, 2.33 while winning his fourth and 5th Cy Youngs, striking out 563 and capturing the coveted pitchers’ triple crown -leading the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts- in both 1997 and ’98.
To further show Duquette and the Red Sox he wasn’t “in his twilight” for his return to Fenway Park, July 12, 1997, he tossed a one hitter with 16 strikeouts. After whiffing Mo Vaughn, he slowly walked off the field and stared up at Duquette’s box. Message delivered.
George Steinbrenner decided Roger should spend part of his career wearing pinstripes in The Stadium—even if it were the new Stadium.
He traded David Wells—who finished his career with 239 wins, more than Whitey Ford, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning or Pedro Martinez—in a loaded package for Roger in February 1999. That autumn, Clemens won a world series game against the Braves.
An October later, he put on one of the great postseason shows.. ever.
After two mediocre starts against Oakland at the outset of the 2000 playoffs, he went into Seattle for Game 4 of the ALCS with media outlets circulating predictions everywhere -on air and in print- that, finally, today was twilight time for The Rocket.
He brushed Alex Rodriguez back in the first inning.
“Alex was complaining, but the way they call the game now, that pitch would be a strike,” Clemens said reminiscing the post-season classic with me this past March.
“I had all three pitches going,” he said. “The fastball, the tight slider, and my split-finger that day was filthy.”
By the time he reached the fifth inning, he had a no-hitter and the velocity on the fastball was touching 100 MPH. In the seventh inning, Mariners outfielder Al Martin hit a ball off Tino Martinrez’s glove for the only hit Clemens surrendered.
“If Tino was just half an inch taller, I would have had a no-hitter,” Roger mused.
Twenty-five years later I was asked to name the greatest postseason pitching performance I ever witnessed. I replied immediately. Roger Clemens, 9-1-0-0-2-15, 5-0 win.
Oh, think about greatness in a Yankee uniform? After the masterpiece in Seattle Clemens faced the New York Mets in the 2000 Subway World Series, just eight days later. He threw out a 8-2-0-0-0-9.
That’s 17-3-0-2-24 in just over a week, both clutch wins for his team.
The following year, Clemens recorded the sixth and final 20-win season of his storied career, catapulting him to his sixth Cy Young.
In June 2003 -at 40 years old- Clemens earned his 300th career victory, simultaneously picking up his 4000th strikeout in the same game at Yankees Stadium.
He was set to hang up the cleats after the 2003 season, but when good friend Andy Petitte bolted New York for Houston in free agency, he was able to Roger to join him for the ride.
So at age 41, Clemens became an Astro, won another Cy Young -his seventh and final- while bagging another ERA title at age 42. He pitched again in the World Series, notching 4 of his 12 career postseason victories in his 3 seasons in Houston.
Roger Clemens 354 wins are second most behind only Greg Maddux’s 355 by any of the 10,000+ pitchers who have thrown a pitch in the big leagues after Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.
He is the only pitcher in the history of the game to win multiple Cy Young Awards in three different decades. He led the league in wins four times and in strikeouts five.
OK, in his Yankees days, a trainer and a teammate testified that Roger tried some illegal substances, even if he never tested positive and there has never been any evidence suggesting otherwise. In June 2012, Clemens was cleared of all charges related to illegal substance allegations by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. They found him not guilty on all six counts of perjury, obstruction of congress, and of making any false statements.
In that Seattle game, he threw 100 MPH within inches of Alex Rodriguez. Against the Mets, he faced Mike Piazza, beaned him and took Piazza out of the All-Star Game. In that world series game, he threw a pitch that shattered Piazza’s bat. When it flew in pieces near Clemens, he picked it up and tossed it near Piazza going down the line.
Later, Yankees manager Joe Torre recalled that because pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre was sidelined battling Multiple Myeloma Cancer he was watching the game in Torre’s office instead of the Yankees dugout.
“Mel told me Roger came in the half inning after the incident and was so devastated how it all had unraveled that he was crying,” Torre passed on.
In his Boston days, when the position players’ took batting practice, Clemens would go run out on the Charles River to maintain his legs and his strength, then on his way back to Fenway stop to see hospitalized kids at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center or Children’s Hospital.
When he was retired and helping the Astros minor league pitchers, one spring training he pitched in a game and faced his oldest son Koby. Roger brushed him back as if he were Arod.
“You couldn’t have been surprised, Peter?” Koby asked me. Next at-bat, Koby roped a base hit.
No, I wasn’t surprised. I was thinking about Sparky Anderson and the bus ride from Lakeland to Winter Haven in 1984 for Roger Clemens’ first start in a Red Sox uniform.
The end.
