NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, June 10th 2007, 4:00 AM
This was the start of it, whatever the Yankees can be the rest of the way, this start for Roger Clemens at Yankee Stadium against a Pirates team whose best hitter is Jason Bay. Clemens gave the Pirates three runs in six innings, gave the Yankees the six innings he is going to give them a lot, got himself his first victory in a Yankee uniform in four years, walked into a standing ovation after he struck out the last two batters he faced, his last ovation of the day. This was one of those days at Yankee Stadium where everybody just celebrated the sheer Yankee-ness of it all, celebrated what Clemens used to be here and what everybody still wants his team to be.
So it was like old times. Or, in Clemens' case, REAL old times.
So it was a dream day for everybody in the place, against a dream opponent, Clemens walking into all that noise after he had struck out Xavier Nady and then Ryan Doumit. The Yankees by then were on their way to a 9-3 victory, one that brought them to within two games of .500, where they haven't been in awhile. Clemens struck out seven and did not hurt that fatigued groin of his and so the day was a triumph all the way around, as he begins to try to earn all that money the only way he can, by pitching the Yankees into the playoffs.
"He wasn't as sharp as he's going to be," Joe Torre said afterward, talking about Clemens' 108-pitch performance. "But it was a good day for him."
A week ago the Yankees had gotten blown out in Boston and were 13-1/2 games behind the Red Sox. Now they are where they are and have won five in a row and six out of their last seven. And Clemens was back in the house, the big baseball house, treated as if he last pitched a major league game eight years ago instead of eight months ago.
"You become a fan," Torre said. "You wanted it to be good."
Clemens gave up five hits. The biggest one against him was a double by Jack Wilson over Bobby Abreu's head in the fourth, bringing the Pirates back to 3-3. Then he got out of the fourth and after that the Pirates did nothing against him. He had given his manager, his teammates, the whole place, exactly what they all wanted. Best of all, he hadn't limped off the mound.
Now he was in the interview room with his two youngest sons seated on either side of him, the one on the right in pinstripes, maybe because this was one of those formal pinstriped occasions, and the one on the left in a royal blue pullover with the Yankee logo where a breast pocket would have been. And Clemens was talking about the Yankee start he was never supposed to make when he walked off the mound in Florida during the 2003 World Series, walked into the same kind of ovation, even on the road, that he got yesterday.
That one was supposed to be goodbye. This one was hello.
Clemens, in and out of pinstripes, is always coming or going. Now he is back, saying it isn't for the money even if the real money he is making is just north of $17million and would be $28million for a whole season. Saying it is for Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada and Joe Torre and Andy Pettitte, of course. Sometimes you expect him to say it's for the troops, too.
"It's just great to be back," Clemens said.
He was in blue jeans by now, wearing an Adidas cap. He looks as if he's lost a little weight since the last time he wore a Yankee uniform. Of course everybody now wants to act as if he never left, when the fact is if he HAD never left, he might have pitched the Yankees through some real bad times in the postseason. He went to a World Series with the Astros instead. That comeback was about family, and Andy Pettitte, and home.
"Great to be back," he said again.
Then he was talking about what could have gone wrong yesterday, other than a lousy performance against what looks like a JV batting order when you compare it to what Clemens is going to have to face in a DH league.
"The worst-case scenario is that I go backwards with my leg again," he said.
He is talking about that "fatigued" groin of his, which forced this start to be pushed back five days. He was supposed to start against the White Sox in Chicago. He got the Pirates at the Stadium instead. Jose Bautista. Freddy Sanchez. Bay. Adam LaRoche. Nady. Doumit. Ronny Paulino. Wilson. Chris Duffy. He still pitched fine. He made it past 100 pitches. He went out for the sixth inning when Torre and pitching coach Ron Guidry were fully prepared for him to call it a day after five.
"If he didn't feel up to it, we were going to bang him," is the way Torre put it.
They didn't have to do it and he pitched his best inning in the sixth and all the people who really were sure they had said goodbye to him as the Yankees were blowing that '03 Series got to say hello one more time at Yankee Stadium. They don't care about the money. They don't care how he left them high and dry. They don't care it was the Pirates yesterday.
They don't even care that Clemens is suddenly a more beloved figure now in pinstripes than he ever was before. They want him to start making things the way they used to be. First bang on their buck yesterday. Old-Timers' Day came early.
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