Before the PED's, before the pinstripes, before he threw the bat handle at Piazza, before he became the TCM, before the first affair with a teenager, there was a magic night at Fenway Park that first turned my attention to the local ball club. I remember the front page Boston Globe store the next morning and realizing that baseball wasn’t a game played by “old people,” because this young man my age was rewriting the MLB record book. I started to pay attention to baseball because of that game.
The Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone writes of that night 34 years ago: Ex-Mariners relive night they were on wrong side of history, 34 years after Roger Clemens’ 20-strikeout game
The Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone writes of that night 34 years ago: Ex-Mariners relive night they were on wrong side of history, 34 years after Roger Clemens’ 20-strikeout game
Highly unlikely for a pitcher in midseason form. For a pitcher in April coming off surgery, it would be managerial malpractice.Gorman Thomas, the Mariners’ designated hitter, told reporters afterward, “There were some guys going up to the plate that night that were literally shaking in their boots. … It was almost like a cartoon, where you see guys swing and the ball goes through their bat. It’s never going to happen again, I guarantee it. No way. It’s going to stand for the rest of major-league history.”
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Which brings to mind one take-away from the game: It’s highly unlikely that in today’s baseball, Clemens would have been allowed to rack up a pitch count of 138 (97 strikes) so soon after surgery to repair rotator-cuff damage in his shoulder.