He's baaaaaaaack!!!

[Michelle]

Clemens Agrees to Re-sign With Yankees

NEW YORK -- Roger Clemens is a Yankee.
With those five words, displayed on the video screen at Yankee Stadium in a surprise announcement during the seventh-inning stretch on Sunday, the 44-year-old right-hander ended all the speculation and confirmed his return to the Bronx.

Public-address announcer Bob Sheppard instructed the crowd to draw its attention to the owner's box and the video screen, where Clemens, holding a microphone, drew a loud ovation from the crowd at the game between the Mariners and Yankees.

"It's a privilege to be back," Clemens said. "I'll be talking to you all soon."

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was not immediately available for comment, but further official announcements are expected shortly.

[Michelle]

UPDATE FROM ESPN.COM:

NEW YORK -- Roger Clemens returned to the New York Yankees, making a dramatic announcement to fans from the owner's box during Sunday's game against the Seattle Mariners.

Clemens' contract will be a pro-rated salary of $28 million dollars, according to ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney. His pro-rated salary last season was $22 million.

Clemens will make about $4.5 million per month for June, July, August and September.

At the end of the seventh-inning stretch, Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard told fans to turn their attention to the box, where Clemens was standing with a microphone. As the video scoreboard in right-center televised Clemens, the seven-time Cy Young Award winner made the announcement himself.

"It's a privilege to be back," he said.

Clemens agreed to a minor league contract and most likely will join the Yankees after several weeks getting into shape.

Clemens, who is close friends with Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, said Pettitte is going to be upset with him because he kept the news quiet. The two talked as recently as Saturday night and Clemens didn't share the news.

"It's time to go to work," Clemens said. "I've got a lot of work to do, to get back up here."

[WhiteWhip]

lets go mets

[Wagner]

You need him, can't win without em.

[dr.jay]

Thats some heavy paper for a 44 year old, good for him, I always liked "The Rocket" he's a bad ass and he works out like an animal!!!

[Meiac09]

trairtor

[LeMansX5]

[motordavid]

Interesting art. on the Rocket, from today's NewYawkTimes...

Clemens Returns in a Save Situation
By SELENA ROBERTS
Published: May 7, 2007

In a dapper striped tie and blazer, with all eyes on his Aqua Velva-fresh face, Roger Clemens wore the look of a groom’s best man when he took the mic at Yankee Stadium yesterday to deliver what ended up as a toast to himself.

Roger Clemens announced his signing from the owner’s box during the seventh inning. He rejected offers from the Red Sox and the Astros to return to the team he played for from 1999-2003.







He has allowed the Yankees to love him once again. Hear, hear.

Clemens is now the lucky fella who has everything. Clemens gets to reunite with his pal Andy Pettitte to resurrect their Yogi and Boo Boo relationship. He will also receive the spa treatment as the special one on the roster who is permitted to lounge by his family pool while the Yankees are on trips.

“I could care less,” Jason Giambi said of the Roger Rules. “I’d carry his bags for him, just as long as he is on the mound.”

So it’s settled: Clemens will be gifted with Giambi as a valet.

Clemens also gets to be a Texas-sized hero, with a chance to restore credibility to a rotation mired in a hamstring ward, lift his beloved Joe Torre from job insecurity and save the Boss from issuing another threat on paper through Howard Rubenstein.

We want you and we need you, Brian Cashman essentially told Clemens’s agent.

So it’s a deal: Clemens will be billed as Dudley Do-Right for his rescue of the Yankees before the Red Sox locomotive barrels down the tracks.
Clemens gets it all — and at $4.5 million a month for the seasonal work of a park ranger. This is hedge-fund star dough, the kind of payoff reserved for the risk takers of the world.

And yet Clemens incurs no risk at all. It’s all on the Yankees.

The threat to the Yankees has nothing to do with Clemens’s age, but how he hasn’t aged at all on the approach to 45 when he once seemed kaput at age 35. Maybe Clemens has developed a natural youth potion, an organic Botox for his old bones. Certainly, Clemens deserves credit for his greatness — with a talent that is an understandable siren’s song for the Yankees — but he has also witnessed his aura undermined by a steroid whisper campaign.

In the past two years, Clemens’s name has been linked to doping speculation amid a book tour by Jose Canseco and documents reported by The Los Angeles Times.

In his Harlequin about steroids, Canseco wrote about Clemens’s irritation with juiced hitters in the mid-90s, sluggers who were gaining on the Rocket’s fastball.

“One of the benefits of steroids is that they’re especially helpful in countering the effects of aging,” Canseco wrote in his book, “Juiced.” “So in Roger’s case, around the time he was leaving the Boston Red Sox — and Dan Duquette, the general manager there, was saying he was ‘past his prime’ — Roger decided to make some changes. He started working out harder. And whatever else he may have been doing to get stronger, he saw results.”

The innuendo did not cause Rocket to flip his booster. Instead, Clemens did what others branded a fraud by the fraudulent might do: He didn’t issue an emphatic denial, but a dismissive laugh as he launched into a comedy routine, poking fun at Canseco for spending his house arrest writing a book in ankle bracelets.

One tell-all down, another one to go. Last October, right after Clemens completed his short season with the Astros, finishing with a 2.30 earned run average and 102 strikeouts in 113 innings, an article surfaced in The Los Angeles Times.

A few months earlier, Jason Grimsley had been busted by authorities for ordering shipments of human growth hormone. Under an interrogation light bulb, Grimsley fingered several players for using performance-enhancing drugs, but the names were redacted in court records. The Times, saying it had seen the affidavit, revealed some of those names, which included Clemens and Pettitte.

The Times’s disclosure enraged the United States Attorney’s office, which labeled the report inaccurate but did not detail what mistakes had been made. What exactly was wrong in the report — the names, or something else?

Pettitte expressed surprise when his name was attached to Grimsley. And Clemens replied by saying he had passed every drug test given — all of them since sampling began in 2003 for a system that still does not include a blood test for human growth hormone.

The testing loopholes make it impossible to decide the purity of a player’s bloodstream. Such is the sticky residue of baseball’s toothless stance on steroids. Each year there is more police action, new steroid developments.

The raid du jour now centers on a former Mets clubhouse attendant, Kirk Radomski, whose Long Island house was searched by investigators, who discovered a steroid supply closet for a client list of major leaguers.
The feds — along with baseball’s steroid sleuth, George J. Mitchell — are investigating Radomski’s info. Mitchell is currently calling players to dish on the league’s culprits.

Clemens may or may not be among the suspects. Are the Yankees concerned? Maybe the Boss has some inside information from his baseball spies. Maybe that is why he has just given Clemens everything a man could want. Either that, or the Yankees are desperate enough to take the risk.

[Verbalkint]

Curt Schilling’s take:

"No one is a bigger fan of what he’s done than I am. I’ve said repeatedly that I think he’s the greatest pitcher that’s ever played."

"I would have loved to have him, I said so, but the second he chose the Yankees it became a non-factor. This game is hard enough worrying about the things you can control much less the things you can’t. We have a very very good team. I think we have the best staff in the game right now. Can that change? Sure it can but no one here can tell us how when and why it will change. Maybe it won’t. Bottom line is if you are in our clubhouse wishing we had Clemens you are basically telling a teammate you suit up with every day that we’re better off without you. I’ve made that mistake in the past and refused to do it again."

"The guy will retire as the greatest pitcher that ever lived. He wanted to go to NY, done deal. I can’t stress it enough, it was a non-issue before yesterday and is a non-issue today. We had no control over him coming or going so it was never more than weight room chatter."

"I happened to see the scoreboard during the game that the Yankees ended up getting Clemens. The media had much to say and ask about it after the game and my answer was the same as I think a lot of guys in our clubhouse; so what? Would it have been nice to pitch with Roger Clemens? Absolutely. Would he have helped us be a better team? I honestly don’t know."

"I am sure his signing was a pretty nice lift for them given the decimating injuries they’ve gone through to this point but I felt before the season, and even more so now, that this team is built to win a World Series as it’s comprised right now. We have the pieces, we have the chemistry and to this point we’ve had our health. If we stay somewhat healthy through the year then our fate will be totally on us. We don’t need anyone else to 'get us over the hump' or make that late push. This roster right now can win a World Series, but it’s going to fall on the players to make that happen."

(from 38pitches.com)