He Can Throw You Off : Baseball: Clemens wants to be the intimidator, but sometimes his outspoken behavior has cost him.

It is a telling statement, delivered as Roger Clemens sits in front of his locker at Fenway Park.

He is hunched forward, intensity apparent in his blue eyes. He could be on the mound, staring in at Jose Canseco or Terry Cooney.

“I’d have been successful at whatever field I chose,” Clemens says. “All that has to do with is confidence, pride and self-discipline.”

The “Possessed Rebel” nameplate that formerly hung above his locker in the clubhouse of the Boston Red Sox has been removed, but he remains driven. He is almost obsessed, at times, by motivational demons that have helped make him a success in his chosen field and have occasionally produced bizarre and outspoken behavior.

“A Roger Clemens comes along once every 50 years,” Red Sox pitching coach Bill Fischer said. “Nobody’s perfect, but he’s the closest thing to it.

“He’s the best right now.”

Perfection is elusive in the field Clemens chose. He seemed to have it when he started the season 6-0. He is 1-3 since but he has pitched poorly only once and his intimidating reputation remains intact.

Clemens, whose $5.375-million annual salary is the highest ever, is both workhorse and warhorse.

“He’s the ultimate competitor,” Seattle Mariner Manager Jim Lefebvre said. “I can remember coaching third base with the (Oakland) A’s and you could see it in his eyes. He’d get in a jam and reach back for something more. It’s always as if it’s personal with Roger.”

Said Fischer: “No one is harder on Roger than Roger himself. He accepts no excuses, no alibis. Second place isn’t good enough. If you had to fight him, you’d have to kill him to win. He’s that strong, that determined.”

At 28, in his seventh season with the Red Sox, Clemens is 7-3 with a 2.33 earned-run average, having pitched 30 consecutive scoreless innings at one point and a five-hitter against the Chicago White Sox when he returned from his five-game suspension for the events surrounding his ejection in Game 4 of the American League playoffs last season.

He is 28-9 over the last two years, and his overall winning percentage of .695--he has a 123-54 record--is the second highest among pitchers with at least 100 victories, exceeded only by Spud Chandler’s .717.

He is also the first pitcher since Catfish Hunter (1970-76) to win at least 17 games for five consecutive years, and last year became only the second American League pitcher in the designated-hitter era to have a sub-2.00 earned-run average.

Ron Guidry had a 1.74 ERA for the New York Yankees in 1978. Clemens won the ERA title at 1.93 and was 21-6 last season, despite having the poorest run support of any Red Sox starter and being sidelined for almost four weeks in September because of a shoulder strain.

He currently leads the majors in strikeouts, has recorded 209 or more for five straight seasons, passed Cy Young to become the club’s strikeout leader last year and, with all that, “has yet to reach his prime,” Fischer said.

“He doesn’t walk many and doesn’t give up home runs,” Fischer said. “If you consider that he gets 10 strikeouts and four popups a game, that means the other team has three or four innings in which to beat you.

“He can take a mediocre staff and make it a great one because he lifts the pressure from everyone else.

“You know you’re going to be in the race because he’s going to be close to 20 games over .500 by himself.”

Clemens was 15 over and the Red Sox 14 over in winning the American League East title last year. In his six full seasons before 1991, Clemens accounted for 65 of the 67 games Boston finished above .500.

Although he has won the Cy Young Award twice and 20 or more games three times, the statistic best illustrating his status as the Red Sox stopper is a 71-20 mark in starts after Boston losses.

“He’s the best we’ve ever had here,” said Johnny Pesky, a player, instructor and club official with the Red Sox for almost 50 years. “I’d pay $100 to watch him pitch.”

Clemens generally makes the opposition pay, what with a 90-m.p.h. or faster fastball and what Fisher calls a dynamite curve, slider and forkball, his equivalent to a changeup.

Then there’s the attitude. Clemens talks candidly about it, saying he gets 35 or so starts a year and doesn’t want to waste any of them.

“The hardest part for me is the four days between starts,” he said. “I want to have the ball, I want to feel in control. I want to be relentless, to pound guys, to know they think about me the same way they do Nolan Ryan or Doc Gooden, that they can’t go up there lazy or they’re going to be embarrassed.

“I mean, I approach every game as if it’s a one-run game. I’m going to move the ball around and pitch inside. It doesn’t bother me if the hitter looks at me like he wants to rip my head off.

“I think I’m a pretty good guy on the days between starts, but not even my wife likes me on days I pitch. I tend to shut out everything and everyone.”

Clemens goes at it so hard that he physically breaks down between starts and has to be reassembled with massage and therapy.

He is wound so tightly that he has been known to run for several miles along the Charles River after defeats, leaving his wife to read by the car’s dome light.

He is a bear on physical fitness. He often runs in the streets of his neighborhood in the morning, or around Fenway Park in the afternoon. The estate he is having built in Katy, Tex., will include a full-size gym. His suburban Boston home includes six exercise machines and a freezer filled with ice. He strengthens his fingers by exercising them in bowls of uncooked rice, and he exercises his mind by keeping notebooks on the tendencies of hitters, umpires and Roger Clemens himself, charting his weight, diet and exercise patterns.

Teammates have tried to follow his routines, but no one succeeds.

“A lot of players sign big contracts and slack off, but Roger just works harder,” said catcher John Marzano, probably Clemens’ closest friend among the Boston players. “He’s never happy, never contented and that’s what makes him a great pitcher and great motivator for the other players.

“I mean, it’s not how far or how long he works out, it’s how hard. I’ve seen him run six miles, stop, then do it again. He has an abundance of energy. I’ve never seen him tired. I’ve never heard him say, ‘I’m 6-0, I can take a day off.’ ”

Said Clemens: “I’ve established a rock, a foundation. It’s what got me here and what will keep me here. I want to defy time and pitch until I’m 40. I want to go where all great players go. I want to go to the Hall of Fame.

“There’s no other place, no other goal except to finally bring a world’s championship to Boston.”

Much of that intensity and the way he is, Clemens believes, stems from his having had to “grow up so fast.” A stepfather died when he was 9. He was reared by his mother, grandmother and older brother, Randy.

“There were six kids and I was taught to speak up when I didn’t think things were right,” he said.

He hasn’t stopped.

It was Clemens, for instance, who complained about security and seating location for players’ wives at Fenway Park, prompting changes.

And it was Clemens, as part of a committee of players, who demanded that crowding on team buses traveling to and from airports be relieved by the exclusion of reporters, resulting in agreement by the club.

When Red Sox management stood and rejected his demand that reporters be deprived of clubhouse access for 30 minutes after the team clinched last year’s division title, it was probably not surprising that Clemens reacted by slamming his fist into the clubhouse door, jeopardizing his career.

“I think from a family standpoint particularly, the conditions here have improved, but I’ve gotten myself into trouble sticking up for the guys,” he said. “A Spike Owen or Luis Rivera couldn’t go upstairs. I’ve had to fight their fights.”

And his own, of course.

Last season, he would talk to reporters only after he had pitched. This season, he has been more agreeable and accessible. He even participates in a news conference during each series on the road to reduce the one-on-one requests.

“I probably opened up too much in my first few years here and felt I got burned by it,” he said. “I got hurt, then overreacted by shutting everyone out.

“I mean, when I won my second Cy Young Award I let reporters in my house, let the photographers take pictures of me using the car phone in my Porsche. I had dreamed of having a car like that and worked hard for it, but they started to use that picture to show how I was spoiled and pampered. Things were twisted to make it look like I hated the city and the fans.

“When Bruce Hurst, a close friend, wasn’t re-signed, I got angry and said some things that were again twisted and taken incorrectly. It was as if the only news with the team was what happened off the field, so I decided to make that the end of it, as far as availability (was concerned). The problem then is that you have no say as to how people perceive you, and I didn’t like that, either.”

The perception last October was one of a dominating pitcher so tightly wound that he seemed on the edge.

He had been sniping at the umpires throughout the playoff series against the Athletics, reportedly demeaning the A’s from the bench.

He went into Game 4 having shaved his stubble into the shape of a Fu Manchu and painted black sunscreen under his eyes. He threw a ball into the stands while warming up, made physical contact with umpire Jim Evans during the furor after his ejection, threatened to find out where Cooney, who had ejected him from 60 feet 6 inches, lived, and bowled over a photographer as he left the field.

His five-day suspension and $10,000 fine were ultimately upheld in an appeal that went to Commissioner Fay Vincent, but Clemens said he felt vindicated by Vincent’s acknowledgement that Cooney’s report of the incident contained inaccurate information regarding things Clemens had allegedly said on the mound.

“Was I intense during that series? Of course,” Clemens said. “The A’s were very cocky, and I wanted to beat them badly. Boston hasn’t won a World Series since 1918, and I wanted another crack at it.

“Then we lost the first three games and some of us had a meeting and decided to just go out and have some fun, that if we were going to get swept it wouldn’t be without a fight. I mean, I was determined to ring some of the A’s up (strike them out), and I’m still upset that I didn’t get more of a chance to do it. I wanted to point my finger at them, as if it was a smoking gun.”

He does not want to discuss a January incident at a Houston bar, in which Clemens allegedly scuffled with police trying to arrest his brother, Randy, who had become involved in a disturbance at a nearby table.

Clemens spent 12 hours in jail and said he will always be vulnerable because of his name and fame.

As the pitching coach noted, “Nobody is perfect.”

Date Opp Decision IP H R ER April 8 Toronto W, 6-2 8 6 1 1 April 13 Cleveland W, 4-0 9 3 0 0 April 18 Kansas City W, 1-0 8 3 0 0 April 23 Toronto W, 3-0 7 5 0 0 Totals before suspension 4-0 record, 0.28 ERA 32 17 1 1 5

Date BB SO April 8 0 6 April 13 0 11 April 18 1 10 April 23 4 7 Totals before suspension 34

(SERVED FIVE-GAME SUSPENSION)

Date Opp Decision IP H R May 3 Chicago W, 7-2 9 5 2 May 8 Minnesota W, 8-3 8 4 1 May 13 Chicago No decision 8 5 2 May 18 Texas L, 13-5 5 13 9 May 23 Detroit L, 5-3 7 5 4 May 28 New York W, 6-2 8 3 1 June 2 Baltimore L, 5-1 8 8 3 Totals after suspension 3-3 record, 3.57 ERA 53 43 22 21 Totals for season 7-3 record, 2.33 ERA 85 60 23 22

Date ER BB SO May 3 2 2 7 May 8 1 1 10 May 13 2 2 7 May 18 9 2 4 May 23 4 2 10 May 28 1 1 8 June 2 2 1 3 Totals after suspension 11 49 Totals for season 16 83