The Antichrist Returns to Gotham

As has been well established on this site and elsewhere if you know me or have talked to me for more than a minute, I am a die hard Boston Red Sox fan. So it was with great interest that I read the text message sent to me yesterday from my friend Mike's younger brother, Jon, somehow a Yankees fan despite growing up in a family of smart people. It read "Clemens is a Yankee!!!"

Those four words seared into my psyche. The pitcher I had once loved as he K'd 20 Mariners, took the Sox to the brink of a title in '86 and won 3 Cy Young Awards, only to dog it towards the end amidst a contract dispute before skipping town to Toronto after the'96 season, was making a return engagement to the Evil Empire. There was a time when such a development would really bug me as a Red Sox fan. However, that time has passed and I was even a bit surprised by how little the news affected me. Ditto for fellow Sox fan Bill Simmons, aka "Sports Guy" on ESPN.com, whose classic piece "Is Clemens the Antichrist?" is linked below.

http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1206543

After taking in the message for a few moments I promptly replied: "They need him. Their pitching is a trainwreck" to which Jon responded "Won't be for long!" Yes, I thought, the 44 year-old with groin problems who has been pitching to the friendlier (i.e. no DH) lineups of the National League is going to return to the harder hitting AL, save the day 6 innings at a time and deliver a title for the Yankees. That is, if he doesn't break down physically, ruffle feathers in the notoriously tight Yankee clubhouse by receiving prima donna treatment or get busted for using Human Growth Hormone (HGH) first.

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070506&content_id=1949377&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Am I biased in this discussion? Of course. I hate both the Yankees and Clemens. Clemens left Boston after three final lackluster seasons (1993-96) with a lot more weight and without so much as a "Thank You" to the fans. Then he promptly "re-dedicated" himself and won 2 Cy Youngs with the Blue Jays to show Sox GM Dan Duquette how wrong he was for letting him go. Where was this work ethic at the end of his time in Boston, when he was more likely to hit a plate of chicken wings than the weight room. Then he went to the Yankees only to bail on them to return home to Houston, who he is now bailing on to return to the Yankees because the Astros stink. Are you seeing a trend here?

Let's call Clemens what he really is: A mercenary for hire. As Sports Guy wrote, "We're coming closer and closer to my dream of Clemens' Hall of Fame plaque featuring a cap with a dollar sign on it." That said, is he also a Hall of Famer who will go down as one of the greatest pitchers of all-time? Yes, of course. But his annual "Will he or won't he return?" routine is tired and since only 3 teams in the league have a chance of signing him is of little consequence to a vast majority of General Managers.

Speaking of GM's, kudos to Yanks GM Brian Cashman for the brilliant move of spending $28 million on a less than sure thing after his 2007 pitching staff quickly came to resemble the Titanic post iceberg. What are you going to do if this doesn't work, Brian? Put pitching coach Ron Guidry back on the mound and bring back Whitey Ford? Injuries aside, it's not exactly an endorsement of the GM's offseason work when you need to overhaul your pitching staff a month into the season.

This was a semi-desperate move by a team whose ERA ranked 27th in baseball and who has been starting the likes of Darrell Rasner and Matt DeSalvo after half their staff pulled a groin, the low point perhaps being the back-to-back-to-back-to-back (that's right, 4 backs) home runs given up by sacrificial lamb Chase Wright (as in "He got Chased Wright to the locker room") in a loss to the Sox in Boston on April 22. The reality is the Yankees truly NEEDED Clemens more than Boston or Houston did. Quite frankly, given the way things went down with Clemens in Boston not only did I not think they needed him, but I did not want him back either.

But, as Sports Guy wrote in a recent blog posting, with the Clemens signing the 2007 Yankees now have a true villain. Though I can always work up a little hatred for ARod and Jeter, it just hasn't been the same for me in the Yankee villain department since Randy Johnson left town without a title. You'd better believe that yours truly in particular and Red Sox Nation in general will be chomping at the bit for Clemens' return to the cauldron that is Sox-Yanks. The best rivalry in sports just got even better.