With his wife, two youngest sons and mother-in-law watching from behind the backstop’s chain-link fence, Roger Clemens shuffled his feet in left-center field to the beat of salsa and Mexican banda music Wednesday night.
If you didn’t know any better or bother to look closely at the men wearing hearing aids, you’d say the atmosphere at Bayland Park’s Field 1 had all the makings of a competitive high school game.
In this league, as he was throughout his legendary 24-year major league career, Clemens is the star. He’s the guy who prompts teammates and competitors to pick it up. A lot.
“I’m glad he’s here,” said 56-year-old retired FedEx employee Rafael Flores. “I’m going to make him run.”
Everybody in the Harris County Senior Softball League, it seems, wants to test the Rocket’s arm in left-center.
As usual, the 50-year-old Clemens was ready.
...For the record, Clemens wears No. 21 for the Hendricks Sports Management team.
Hendricks hit a walk-off single up the middle in the bottom of the sixth inning to produce a 16-15 victory, and his youngest and most celebrated teammate was the first to greet him with a high-five.
“I don’t feel 50,” Clemens said. “Everybody tells you 50 is the new 40, right?”
Repoz
Posted: August 23, 2012 at 01:02 PM |
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1. Fred Lynn Nolan Ryan Sweeney Agonistes Posted: August 23, 2012 at 01:55 PM (#4215973)Well, sure, I'd want to see that. Along with how well he plays the position in general.
The best OF arm I've ever seen in softball was a guy I played with in Virginia about 10 years ago. That league was all doubleheaders (1-1 count, 1 hr time limit, great for getting in lots of ball & then hitting the bar). I was in LF & this guy always played LCF; in one doubleheader he threw out four guys at third - every throw on a line, knee-high, right on the bag. Never saw anything like it; could NOT figure out why they kept trying to run on him. Maybe they just couldn't believe it, I dunno.
13BB, 61K, 6 doubles, 1 sac fly, and twice hit-by-pitch.
The best part, for me, was this. After Clemens hit a double...
I play in a similar style league. Most players in the league are like me: decent high school players but nothing more. There are a few who never even played high school ball, and a few who were never really good at baseball but can hit the living crap out of a softball.
Then there's one guy on our team. Like the guy you describe, we put him in left center, and he has a cannon. Last year, in the tournament, he threw a guy out at third when he rounded the base a bit too far. Seriously. The throw wasn't made to third until the guy rounded third. Bad base running, yes, but an even better throw. No one really runs on him anymore after throwing out several runners last year.
Of course, it isn't really fair that he's 25 and was a college centerfielder just three years ago, whereas most everyone else in the league is in their mid-30's.
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