After He Struck Out 20, Lightning Struck Again

He was chasing his own legend.

Roger Clemens, 10 years after he became the first man to strike out 20 batters in a nine-inning game, was doing it again.

In his last year with the Boston Red Sox, Clemens, 34, had his teammates lined up on the top step of the visitors’ dugout at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium.

He ended the game with his 20th strikeout.

He struck out 12 through five innings, 15 through six and 17 through seven.

In the ninth inning, a radar gun caught his fastball at 96 mph.

Of 151 pitches, 101 were strikes.

But not even a performance like that would induce Red Sox management to offer him the contract extension he wanted. Clemens, who had a 1.86 earned-run average in his eight starts before the 20-strikeout game, finished the season with a league-leading 257 strikeouts, though his record was only 10-13.

In August, he had pitched 28 consecutive scoreless innings.

After the season, he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and led the league in strikeouts and victories in each of the next two seasons.

Only Clemens and the Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs have struck out 20 in a nine-inning game.

Also on this date: In 1919, the plot to fix the World Series was hatched in a room at Boston’s Hotel Buckminster, when White Sox player Chick Gandil told gambler Sport Sullivan: “I think we can put it [the World Series] in the bag.” . . . In 1988, Janet Evans, 17-year-old swimmer from Placentia, won the first gold medal of the Seoul Olympics, in the 400-meter medley.