What He's Done

"I'm angry that that what I've done for the game of baseball and the personal, in my private life, what I've done, that I don't get the benefit of the doubt."
- Roger Clemens (60 Minutes)

"It kills me that this is happening to my dad. What he's done for the game and what now is being turned back to him for what he's done for the game is tough."
- Koby Clemens (Associated Press)


What has Roger Clemens done for the game of baseball?

Undoubtedly one of the best pitchers of his generation, Clemens won an unprecedented number of Cy Young Awards, and is arguably the most dominant pitcher of the modern era. This makes him a great baseball player indeed, but Clemens has been fairly compensated. Over the course of his 21-year career, Clemens has earned more than $121 million in salary (http://www.baseball-reference.com) and this is to say nothing of endorsements, investments, etc. Clemens is (was) beloved, especially in his home state of Texas, where he and Nolan Ryan sit on the Mt. Rushmore of big, burly, Texas pitchers.

But if not for Roger Clemens, how different would baseball be? What makes Clemens any more important to the game, what more does the game owe him than it does Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, or Tom Seaver? Baseball doesn’t owe anybody for its success or popularity. There’s a very short list, in fact, of individual players that deserve recognition for what they’ve done for the game.

Babe Ruth - Baseball’s first larger than life superstar, Babe Ruth is credited for baseball’s defining surge in popularity in the 1920s. He was a sheer force of nature, the homeruns, the bravado, the personality; Babe Ruth wasn’t only the game’s greatest player, but remained ‘the face of baseball’ decades after his playing career, and his life, had passed.

Jackie Robinson - If it weren’t Jackie Robinson, it would have been somebody else. Keeping black athletes out of the game was indefensibly racist, ignorant, and unreasonable, but it was also bad business sense. America was changing, slowly, but by the mid-to-late 1940s it was painfully clear that the Major Leagues didn’t have a monopoly on baseball talent. Some of the game’s best and brightest toiled in the Negro Leagues, and a lost generation of African-American players and fans would suffer. Jackie Robinson was not so remarkable because he was great. He was not so remarkable because he was black. Another owner, at another time, would have found another great black player to test the Major Leagues. Jackie Robinson was remarkable for his temperament, his consciousness, and his grace. It was absolutely vital that Major League Baseball’s first black player handled insult as easily as he handled pop flies, deflected hate-speech and racism like they were inside fastballs. For this, baseball owes Jackie Robinson perhaps more than any other player in the history of the game.

Curt Flood - Less heroic to owners and fans alike, Curt Flood became a cult hero among professional baseball players. In refusing to accept a trade after the 1969 season, he challenged the Major Leagues to defend its labor policies. Though he did not win the case, the matter reached the nation’s highest court, and Flood is credited with paving the way for free agency, a change that ushered in baseball’s modern era.

Cal Ripken Jr. - Cal Ripken Jr. resuscitated baseball’s image in the wake of 1994’s debilitating labor strike. After the cancellation of the World Series, fans punished the game with half-empty stadiums and lackluster television viewership. The culmination of Ripken’s consecutive game streak captivated the world, and as the clean-cut fan favorite closed in on one of baseball’s hallowed records, excitement reached a fever pitch. It can be argued that Ripken was the right man at the right time, that he ‘saved’ baseball’s image and paved the way for the sport’s late-90s resurgence.