By Thomas Boswell
Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Ever since Roger Clemens left Boston 11 years ago, the Red Sox have not let anybody wear No. 21, presumably in his honor, but just as likely in hopes that, as the great karmic wheel of baseball turned, they might one day get him back. Maybe now Boston can complete the grieving and give the number to somebody else, like maybe the batboy. Empire to Nation, the only way the Rocket is coming back to Fenway Park is when he arrives in Boston wearing pinstripes on June 1 to pitch for the Yankees.

Don't you love it? Just as we were starting to feel a tiny bit sorry for the Yanks -- lovable Joe Torre's job in jeopardy, 10 starting pitchers in the season's first 30 games, Matt DeSalvo and Darrell Rasner in the rotation -- George Steinbrenner remembers that it's his job to be The Boss. Don't play fair. Show no shame. Outspend everybody. Make Clemens look like a $1-million-a-game hired gun. And get the Evil Empire right back where it belongs -- writhing in misery and self-recrimination in October. Watching the Yanks not win the World Series, for the seventh straight year, is going to be so much more fun now.

The Yankees have had many great periods. They've helped the game in countless ways. But this is my favorite Bronx era of them all. Someday, sadly, it will end. The Yankees will either become great again or be forced to rebuild. But, for now, they're perfect: spectacularly overpaid, alternately worshiped and tormented by their impatient fans, and just flawed enough to fail at the precise moment when real Yanks are supposed to win. Sometimes, you wait a lifetime to see the dreams of childhood fulfilled.

On paper, the Yankees look fabulous again. Their budget just went back over $200 million. They've reunited Clemens with his teammates from the 1999 and 2000 champions: Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. You know, they're the right kind of Yankees, as opposed to that despicable third basemen who hit 14 homers in April while the team kept losing. Soon, the New York rotation will include Cy Young runner-up Chien-Ming Wang, Clemens, Mike Mussina, Pettitte and Phil Hughes, 20, who left his second Yankees game in the seventh inning with a no-hitter in progress.

"Well, they came and got me out of Texas, and I can tell you it's a privilege to be back," Clemens said over the public address system at packed Yankee Stadium during the seventh-inning stretch on Sunday. "I'll be talking to y'all soon."

On Monday, the 44-year-old Clemens did, vowing that: "I expect to perform like I was 25. Anything short of that would be a disappointment." At 25, Clemens won 20 games. This year, he may get 20 starts. Talk about setting the bar high.

"I still have people that I don't want to let down," Clemens said. Thus the stage has been set for strangulation by expectation. Maybe not in the regular season, but eventually.

Who dreamed that October would become the month when, year after year, we'd get to watch the Yankees fold, against the Diamondbacks, Angels, Marlins, Red Sox, Angels and Tigers. Joy in a different city every year. Step right up, folks. Take your turn. Everybody gets their chance to dump the Yankees in the tub of water. Now, just as the mystique seemed almost dead, Clemens, the greatest right-handed pitcher since Walter Johnson, has returned to revive the Yankees' (almost) legitimate hopes.

Clemens's return, however, offers baseball fans an even broader possibility for fun in the future. After all, when Satchel Paige was 59, he started a game for the Kansas City A's and pitched three scoreless innings, allowing only one hit. Clemens won't turn 59 until 2021. This should give us pause, or make us shudder, when we consider all the possibilities in Rocket's future.

After giving the Yankees credibility as a contender this season, at a cost of $25 million in salary and luxury tax, there's still plenty of time for Clemens to continue his odyssey in other towns. Surely, after his 2.30 ERA in 19 starts for Houston last season he's got a few more years left in his arm. He could return to the Blue Jays, where he twice won the Cy Young Award, in hopes of taking them to the '09 World Series. By '10, maybe the Orioles bullpen might need help. And, by '11, perhaps the Nats and Stan Kasten will throw $2 million a start at his feet to help Washington make its first wild-card run.

If Clemens pitches until he's Paige's age, he might demand a contract with a clause that allowed him to report on Oct. 1, just in time for the playoffs, then skip any Series games that conflicted with the T-ball games of his as-yet-unborn grandchildren.

Sure, it's silly. But everything about this annual spring pursuit of Clemens, with the Yanks, Red Sox and Astros hovering for months like supplicants, is unprecedented in American sports history.

"Clemens is absolutely unique and ought to be appreciated," Kasten said yesterday. "There is no analogue to what he is doing now. To be paid like the best pitcher in the game, but to be able to do it only for part of a season at a time so it suits him, we may never again see a pitcher who fits those criterion or can have those demands met."

Of course, when Tiger Woods is 50, perhaps the PGA Tour can create a rule that allows him to play only the back nine.

For now, Clemens's return brings only delight and amusement to the game. Even Clemens sees it, saying on Monday, "I think I can go right into senior softball." The Yankees' Jason Giambi has offered to carry Clemens's bags to his car so he never hurts himself doing any heavy lifting. And even the Red Sox have their generous moments: Mike Lowell acknowledged that the Yanks signing Clemens was essentially what Boston did with its astronomical qualifying bid to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka for more than $100 million in total expenditure.

Fortunately, not everyone sees the amusement in this new and novel rite of spring, the courting of Clemens. "It would be nice to have him," Boston's Curt Schilling said, "but we don't need him."

Nail those words to the Yankees' bulletin board. If anything will get Clemens in shape for that early-June series in Fenway, that should do it. Maybe Schilling can face him. Remember to wear the bloody sock.