Roger Clemens

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Roger Clemens bigraphy, stories - Baseball pitcher

Roger Clemens : biography

August 4, 1962 –

William Roger Clemens (born August 4, 1962) is an American former baseball starting pitcher. Clemens played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for four teams. Clemens was one of the most dominant pitchers in major league history, tallying 354 wins, a 3.12 earned run average (ERA), and 4,672 strikeouts, the third-most all time. An 11-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion, he won seven Cy Young Awards during his career, the most of any pitcher in MLB history. Clemens was known for his fierce competitive nature and for his hard-throwing pitching style that he used to intimidate batters. He is nicknamed "The Rocket".

Clemens debuted in the major leagues in 1984 with the Boston Red Sox, whose pitching staff he anchored for 12 years. In 1986, he won the American League (AL) Cy Young Award, the AL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, and the All-Star Game MVP Award, and he struck out an MLB-record 20 batters in a single game. After the 1996 season, Clemens left Boston via free agency and joined the Toronto Blue Jays. In each of his two seasons with Toronto, Clemens won a Cy Young Award, as well as the pitching triple crown by leading the league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. Prior to the 1999 season, Clemens was traded to the New York Yankees where he won his only two World Series titles. In 2003, he reached his 300th win and 4,000th strikeout in the same game. Clemens left for the Houston Astros in 2004, where he spent three seasons and won his seventh Cy Young Award. He rejoined the Yankees in 2007 for one last season.

Clemens was alleged by the Mitchell Report to have used anabolic steroids during his late career, mainly based on testimony given by his former trainer Brian McNamee. SI.com, Jan. 7, 2008 Clemens firmly denied these allegations under oath before Congress, leading congressional leaders to refer his case to the Justice Department on suspicions of perjury. On August 19, 2010, a federal grand jury at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., indicted Clemens on six felony counts involving perjury, false statements and obstruction of Congress. Clemens pleaded not guilty, but proceedings were complicated by prosecutorial misconduct, leading to a mistrial. The verdict from his second trial came in on June 18, 2012. Clemens was found not guilty on all six counts of lying to Congress in 2008, when he testified that he never took performance-enhancing drugs.

Awards and recognition

In , while many of his performances and milestones were yet to come, he ranked number 53 on The Sporting News‘ list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was elected by the fans to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In , the updated Sporting News list moved Clemens up to #15.

By the end of the 2005 season, Clemens had won seven Cy Young Awards (he won the AL award in 1986, , , , , and , and the National League award in ), an MVP and two pitching triple crowns. With his 2004 win, he joined Gaylord Perry, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martínez as the only pitchers to win it in both leagues and became the oldest pitcher to ever win the Cy Young. He has also won The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year Award five times, was named an All-Star 11 times, and won the All-Star MVP in 1986.

In October 2006, Clemens was named to Sports Illustrated’s "all-time" team.

On August 18, 2007, Roger Clemens got his 1,000th strikeout as a Yankee. He is only the ninth player in major league history to record 1,000 or more strikeouts with two different teams. Clemens has recorded a total of 2,590 strikeouts as a member of the Red Sox and 1,014 strikeouts as a Yankee. Of his nearly quarter century in the Major Leagues, 13 years have been spent with the Red Sox and 6 with the New York Yankees.

On January 9, 2013, Roger Clemens was denied entry into MLB Hall of Fame on his first Ballot. Clemens only received 37.6% votes for introduction into the Hall of Fame.

Personal

Clemens married Debra Lynn Godfrey (born May 27, 1963) on November 24, 1984. They have four sons: Koby Aaron, Kory Allen, Kacy Austin, and Kody Alec—all given "K" names to honor Clemens’s strikeouts ("K’s"). Koby was recently released by the Toronto Blue Jays organization.