BOSTON – Six years ago they met in one of baseball’s most remembered games. Today, their fastballs don’t push the speed guns high, their bodies ache and their records aren’t what we are used to seeing.
Still, Roger Clemens against Curt Schilling, even at 45 and 40, get the juices flowing when they face each other. That’s tonight’s matchup at Fenway Park when the Yankees and Red Sox finish their season series.
A half-dozen years ago, Clemens and Schilling started Game 7 of the 2001 World Series in Phoenix. Clemens went 61/3 innings, allowed one run, seven hits, walked one and fanned 10. Schilling worked an inning longer for the Diamondbacks, gave up two runs, six hits, didn’t walk a batter and fanned nine. They didn’t figure in the decision because Luis Gonzalez’s broken-bat bloop single off Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning won the game and the World Series for the Diamondbacks. Schilling shared the MVP award with Randy Johnson.
Tonight, Clemens and Schilling aren’t what they were that night in the desert. But they aren’t two guys hanging on. Clemens, who hasn’t pitched since Sept. 3 because of a right elbow that has ligament damage and received two cortisone injections last week, is 6-6 with a 4.45 ERA.
Schilling is making his fifth start of the season against the Yankees and the third at Fenway. He is 0-2 with a 5.76 ERA. Schilling doesn’t have a win in his last five starts against the Yankees and hasn’t beaten them since June 8, 2006, at Yankee Stadium. He was the loser on Aug. 30 in The Bronx despite allowing two runs (homers by Robinson Cano) and six hits in seven innings.
Tonight is the first time since Game 3 of the 2003 ALCS that Clemens will work in front of the fans who loved him as a Red Sox player and loathe him as a Yankee. In nine career regular-season starts at Fenway as an opponent, Clemens is 5-0 with a 3.14 ERA. As a Yankee against the Red Sox, Clemens is 7-5 with a 4.40 ERA in 16 starts. This year he is 1-0 with a 1.50 ERA. He beat the Red Sox on Aug. 29, 4-3, by going six innings and allowing two hits and a run.