Rocket heading back home

Roger Clemens now has the chance to put his stamp on three different places.

Updated: January 13, 2004, 3:22 PM ET
By Jim Baker | MLB Insider
When one of the greatest pitchers ever unretires folks are going to notice, and notice they have, with a barrage of stories reacting to Roger Clemens signing with the Astros yesterday. Every day it seems, something else happens to keep baseball in the news months removed from its last regular season and months before its next one.

Few of us ever make our mark on one geographic place, let alone two. Most famous people are closely identified with one locale, but Roger Clemens now has the chance to put his stamp on three places. He was a legend in Boston, highly regarded in New York and -- if he can help the Astros to their first World Series appearance -- he'll be the local hero there, too -- although he is already closely identified with Texas from his college days at U.T. in Austin.

Strangely, the one place with which his name is not synonymous is Toronto, where he pitched in 1997 and 1998 and probably threw the best ball of his career. There was no postseason glory there and no monster press machine there and those years are the least-known of his career when, in fact, they should probably be his most celebrated.


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Jim Baker is an author at Baseball Prospectus and a frequent contributor to Page 2. You can e-mail Jim at bottlebat@gmail.com.

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