Clemens Finally Has Earned Pinstripes

The last baseball decade of the millennium ended Wednesday night with no question as to the year’s best team or the most dominant of the 10.

In a time of history, there was also no question that Roger Clemens shed 13 years of frustration as the New York Yankees--baseball’s real all-century team--turned the Atlanta Braves into pretenders for that Team of the Decade laurel.

The Yankees, winning their 25th World Series and third in the last four years, completed a four-game sweep of the embarrassed Braves as Clemens, a five-time Cy Young award winner, a future Hall of Famer and a member of that all-century team announced in Atlanta before Game 2, pitched 7 2/3 shutout innings in a 4-1 victory that made this career winner of 247 games a winner in the one way that had escaped him and which he wanted most.

In, perhaps, a fitting conclusion to what had been a fitful year for the Rocket in New York, the 37-year-old Clemens finally got his ring and said, “I finally know what it feels like to be a Yankee. I mean, this is everything everybody had always said it would be.”

Pumping his fists, exhorting teammates, Clemens allowed only four hits and one run in erasing the lingering memory--”there’s no reason to look back now,” he said--of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series that may be remembered best for the ground ball that rolled under Bill Buckner’s glove to send the Boston Red Sox to defeat against the New York Mets but also is remembered for the Rocket’s strange departure after he had given up only one earned run in seven innings. Did Clemens take himself out? Did Manager John McNamara inexplicably remove him?

Clemens went to work in a World Series game Wednesday night for the first time since that controversial incident. He went to work in the aftermath of a disappointing 14-10 season following his spring acquisition in a trade that sent the popular David Wells to Toronto, a season in which he seemed to have lost some of his intimidating velocity. He went to work for the first time since returning to Fenway Park and being bombed in a 13-1 loss to Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox 10 days ago.

None of that seemed to matter as Clemens mowed down the hapless Braves and none of it mattered to Clemens except for the insinuations--despite his clinching, 3-0 victory in Game 3 of the division series against Texas--that he could no longer pitch a big game. That did matter. That did bother him.

“I heard people say I’d get rattled, that the Yankees would have to wait to clinch until ‘El Duque’ [Orlando Hernandez] pitched Game 5,” Clemens said. “I don’t rattle and I’ve pitched a lot of big games, and I put pressure on myself to rise to the occasion. I mean, I put more pressure on myself than I could stand because my kids kept telling me that I had to get this over so I would be sure to be home to trick or treat on Halloween.”

There was no masking Clemens’ or the Yankees’ emotions, or Manager Joe Torre’s feelings that Clemens was the right man at the right time.

“I just thought it was a perfect way to end the World Series, the man coming over here to, well, because he wanted a World Series ring,” Torre said. “We traded for him because we felt he was a good fit for our club. He didn’t have the kind of year that he’s used to having but I couldn’t see it not happening tonight with the kind of career he’s had. It just seemed like the perfect setup for us.”

Given Clemens’ credentials, he might have been slighted by not being picked to pitch Game 1, but he had met with Torre prior to the opener and told the manager that he had to go with Hernandez, who has been the best pitcher on a rotation that stole the spotlight from Atlanta’s renowned rotation in this Series, holding the Braves to a .200 batting average and nine runs compared to the Yankees’ 21.

In an incredible run for any era, the Yankees have won 12 consecutive World Series games, registered consecutive sweeps against the Braves and San Diego Padres, gone 22-3 in the last two postseasons and won three of the last four World Series.

There are going to be changes on a team that has won 234 games in the last two seasons, and even George Steinbrenner was reluctant to call it a dynasty.

“I’ll settle for team of the decade, now that we’ve won,” the principal owner said amid the champagne ritual of the clubhouse, adding that if this isn’t his best team ever, if it didn’t always sustain the momentum of last year’s, “it was my greatest team for heart. It reflected the spirit of this city.”

The Yankees handled the Braves with the same pinstriped precision and poise with which they overcame a season of adversity for members of the family, or as David Cone said, “We earned a master’s degree in coping with misfortune this year.”

A proud organization lost Joe DiMaggio and Catfish Hunter, monuments in a storied tradition. The manager battled prostate cancer. Darryl Strawberry, coping with the demons again, missed more than half the season because of his arrest on drug and solicitation charges. Andy Pettitte’s father had heart problems, and Chuck Knoblauch’s battled Alzheimer’s disease. Scott Brosius, Luis Sojo and Paul O’Neill lost their fathers--Sojo on the eve of the Series and O’Neill early Wednesday morning. Both played Wednesday night and both were among the many Yankees shedding tears as they embraced warmly and repeatedly on the field after the final out.

“There’s been so much emotion on this club this year,” Torre said, “that I can’t put into words what this feels like. There was a very special bond and respect among these players. I mean, there’s no greater high than playing in a World Series game and no greater low than losing a member of the family, but these guys never lost their focus. They consistently picked each other up, and I would even say it was a better year than last year because of what we had to overcome and because it validated last year. They didn’t rest on their laurels.”

Clemens added to his Wednesday night, but he, too, was caught up in that special bond. On his memorable night, he talked more about the “warrior heart” of the grieving O’Neill and Sojo and said, “I don’t know if I could have done what they did by playing tonight.”

The Rocket can demand a trade now that his and his team’s season is over, but while conceding it may be something he thinks about, “I finally know what it is to be a Yankee now and I hope to be back.”