Clemens is great, but he's no Ryan

By By Will Bardwell / sports writer
May 13, 2004
I've never been overly impressed by Roger Clemens.
Don't get me wrong. I think he's a great pitcher. To be almost 42 years old and have a 7-0 record with a 2.11 ERA is an unbelievable accomplishment.
But despite what ESPN would have you think, he's not the greatest pitcher ever. Heck, he's not even the best Astros pitcher ever.
Coincidentally, as much as Clemens is overrated, likewise is the underappreciation of the best pitcher to ever wear an Astros jersey Nolan Ryan.
I'm not an Astros fan, so I don' t really care if bandwagon fans in Houston start spewing garbage about how great the Rocket is. But I am a lifelong Ryan fan, and I'm always amazed at how fans can consistently overlook the game's all-time strikeouts leader.
In a poll on ESPN.com on Wednesday, readers were asked to vote for the best right-hander of the past 50 years. Clemens was one of the candidates. Greg Maddux was another. Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson both made the list, but Ryan didn't.
Ryan won 324 games, pitched seven no-hitters and struck out more than 5,700 batters. How is it so easy to forget him?
The biggest knock on Ryan and believe me, I've heard this plenty of times is that he also lost 290 games. Therein lies the biggest difference between Ryan and Clemens Ryan played on bad teams his entire career. Clemens, on the other hand, has always played on winning teams.
For example, take Ryan's two best seasons in 1973 and 1974. In '73, Ryan was 21-16 with four shutouts, two no-hitters, a 2.87 ERA and 383 strikeouts a single-season record that still stands.
The next year, Ryan lit it up again with a career-high 22 wins, 367 strikeouts and a 2.89 ERA.
Both years, Ryan's California Angels were bottom dwellers. The Angels were 79-83 in 1973, and finished at the bottom of the AL West at 68-94 in 1974. Over the two-year span, Ryan accounted for nearly a third of California's wins.
Since Clemens broke into the majors in 1984, he has played for only five losing teams. During Ryan's 27 seasons, 12 of his teams had losing records.
The only really great team Ryan played for was the 1969 world-champion Mets. It was Ryan's rookie season, though, and he managed only a meager 6-9 record. Other than a playoff appearance with the Angels and two postseason berths with the Astros, Ryan's teams were perennial losers.
Clemens, on the other hand, has usually been a part of very good teams, with the exception of a few years in Boston and his stint in Toronto. He won four World Series championships in five years with the Yankees and won a handful of division titles throughout his career.
And while his tenure in New York is generally regarded as the best work of his career, the Rocket's stats don't live up to the billing. The last time Clemens finished with an ERA under 3.50 was 1998 the year before he arrived in the Bronx.
At no point in his career has Clemens recorded 300 strikeouts in a season. Ryan did it six times, including five times in six years during the 1970s. Ryan's final 300-strikeout season came in 1989, during his first season with the Texas Rangers at age 42.
Most important of all, though, is the simple fact that I just don't like Clemens. And not because he's good, but because he's a pansy. Since he can throw fastballs in the upper 90s, Clemens has developed an undeserved reputation as a "tough guy." My lasting impression of Clemens will always be Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, when Clemens picked up a chunk of Mike Piazza's shattered bat and hurled it toward the Mets catcher.
That was enough to label him a sissy, but then he told reporters afterward that he thought the broken lumber was the ball, and he was trying to throw Piazza out.
Okay, first of all, baseballs are not made of jagged pine. Second of all, even if they were, the object would still be to throw the ball to first base not at the base runner. If Clemens were so "cool and tough," why hide behind such a thin excuse?
Ryan also had a memorable confrontation late in his career. During Ryan's farewell tour in 1993, he plunked Chicago's Robin Ventura with a fastball. Ventura, 21 years Ryan's junior, conceived the worst idea of his life and charged the mound. One headlock and six punches to the head later, Ryan's teammates pulled him off Ventura after the veteran gave the White Sox third baseman the embarrassment of his life.
Coincidentally, Clemens has chosen to end his career the same way Ryan did by coming home. Clemens is a Houston-area native playing out his final days for his hometown Astros, much as Ryan moved closer to Alvin by wrapping up his career with the Rangers in Arlington, Texas. Even more coincidentally, Ryan began a front-office promotional job this season with the Astros, just as Clemens came to town.
Now, not only is Clemens not the best pitcher to ever wear an Astros uniform he's not even the best pitcher employed by the Astros.