Roger Clemens

I was watching excerpts and reading articles on this whole Roger Clemens mess this past week. Pretty bad timing with the start of spring training during the same week. It's too bad to have to see all of the steroid/HGH controversy flood the media theses days, but I guess we will have to deal with it until it is somehow resolved and we can appreciate baseball players for their baseball ability again rather than size and strength.

No matter where you stand on whether or not Clemens has committed any sort of illegality, I prefer to think back to the young Rocket and how dominant he was in his prime with the Red Sox. I was amazed reading his line in the box scores in those days. Often it would look something like, 9 innings, 5 hits, 0 or 1 run, 14 K's and ZERO walks! That's pretty incredible if you think about how great MLB hitters are. Here you have a guy who, as a hitter, you know will be throwing the ball over the plate. You can be aggressive, right? Well, hitters back in those days were no match for Roger Clemens. It is a testament to his natural ability ( I am assuming he wasn't using any steroid or hormone treatment in his early years, I'd have a hard time believing that) and the true hard work he put in to become the best pitcher of his era.

The lesson from Roger Clemens to young pitchers shouldn't be in the news you are reading now but from the stories, articles and statistics of him in his prime. There is no denying he was one of the hardest workers out there.

There really is no magic pill to be the best you can be......it's work, work, work.....