The Wrongs of Spring

He's not even on a team this year, since the World Baseball Classic farce doesn't count (motto: all the best players in the world, except for the ones you get to see play 162 games each summer in your own country anyway and are instead sitting the WBC out to play MLB!) and it seems you can be on the Italian team if you ordered spaghetti marinara once, so the whole nationality thing seems screwy, too, but there was Roger Clemens pitching yesterday, doing it the way he always has despite being 137 now. The Hartford Courant, via wire reports, writes:

Roger Clemens' son took the Rocket deep on his first pitch to a batter in spring training, hitting a trademark fastball over the left field fence Monday at the Astros camp in Kissimmee, Fla.

"That was probably one of the harder fastballs I cut loose," Clemens said after throwing to son Koby and other Houston minor leaguers. "He got my attention."

Then the Rocket got Koby's. The next time his oldest son came to the plate, Roger buzzed him high and tight with another fastball. The younger Clemens dodged the pitch, then smiled at his father.

That's how you get to be Hall of Fame pitcher--just be a Hall of Fame bastard, even to your own flesh and blood, even in a warm-up fake game.