The Rocket That Fell to Earth by Jeff Pearlman

Author:Jeff Pearlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

IN JANUARY 1995, ROGER and Debbie Clemens went on a week’s vacation to Honolulu, where they ate, swam, read, danced—and renewed their wedding vows.

It was Roger’s idea, a token romantic offering to his lovely wife but also a telling glance into his mind’s inner workings. By this point, Clemens’ affair with Mindy McCready was well established, and he was known to have had other dalliances on the major league circuit. Yet much like the serial killer who cheerfully shows up for work each day at the post office, Clemens had (and still has) an uncanny ability to compartmentalize these parts of his life. He could hit three batters in the head and incite a massive brawl, then moments later praise the clubhouse pot roast and baked potatoes. He could walk five in one and two-thirds of an inning, then tell the assembled media that he had thrown the ball well. He could sleep around while reaffirming his commitment to his beloved bride.

For nearly all of his life, Clemens’ sole focus was baseball. That’s what Randy, his older brother, had demanded, and the result was a physically fully formed adult who had missed out on much that life had to offer. The teenage Clemens had never really known of puppy love, of running wild with his friends, of spring break trips to Cancún. He was a sports cyborg, instructed to throw as hard as possible as often as possible. But Clemens was inexperienced in the ways of the world, and he knew it. Sometimes, he told teammates, it’d be fun not to be a ballplayer, to just be a normal guy with normal plans and normal worries. To be unexceptional. This isn’t to say that Clemens is introspective. He’s not and never has been. (Says Tyler Kepner, who covered Clemens later in his career for The New York Times, “I don’t think he ever thought introspection would serve a purpose.”) But Clemens is human, and his background resulted in certain inescapable flaws.

Hence, while other major leaguers bemoaned the strike that canceled the 1994 World Series and carried over into the following season, Clemens, Boston’s player representative, seemed to feel as if he were released from shackles. Finally, here was a free pass to spend time away from the ballpark and indulge his cravings. For the first time since signing with Boston a decade earlier, Clemens abandoned much of his grueling fitness plan and lived it up. He traveled to Hawaii; played golf several times a week; served as a celebrity judge on Star Search; attended Super Bowl XXIX, between the 49ers and Chargers in Miami, and the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four in Seattle. “Baseball is at a standstill,” he excitedly told the Orlando Sentinel in January, “but I’m doing everything.”

When the strike finally ended in early April 1995, the Roger Clemens who reported to Boston’s spring training facility in Fort Myers, Florida, had changed in three noticeable ways.

First, he sported a new haircut that Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald described as “a cross between Marcia Clark and Billy Crystal.

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