Clemens Is Loyal to Yankees

Roger Clemens has a message for the Hall of Fame, of which he probably will become a member of in 2009: I will go in as a Yankee or I will skip my own induction ceremony. Clemens delivered the message like a high-and-tight fastball Saturday, 14 hours after he became baseball’s 21st 300-game winner.

“I play 20 years, work my tail off, they’re not going to tell me what hat I’m wearing,” Clemens told Newsday. “I promise you that. There might be a vacant seat there. I’ll take my mother and we’ll go to Palm Springs and invite all y’all and we’ll have our own celebration.”

The Hall in recent years has selected the cap that will appear on the plaque of new inductees -- after Wade Boggs expressed an interest in going in as a Tampa Bay Devil Ray. Clemens spent 13 years with the Red Sox, then two with the Blue Jays, and the last five with the Yankees.

Clemens has displayed hard feelings toward former Boston general manager Dan Duquette, who uttered the infamous line that Clemens was in the “twilight” of his career when he was allowed to leave the Red Sox as a free agent after the 1996 season.

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