Welcome home, Rocket.
That’s what Astros owner Jim Crane would tell Roger Clemens if he decides to return to Major League Baseball. The legendary pitching great will start Saturday for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League and has a personal services contract with Houston currently.
Clemens has been non-committal about returning to the bigs, but he hasn’t ruled it out either. Crane thinks it’s something Astros “fans might like,” he told myfoxhouston.com. The Astros are currently the worst team in baseball with a 39-86 record.
“It might be fun and certainly get a few people in the ballpark,” the owner said. “I don’t see anything negative about that, but the Astros wouldn’t want to do it for the money, the extra gate or anything like that.”
Crane says he wouldn’t want to make it “a publicity stunt.”
“If we did it, I want to try and take it and turn it into a positive, which would be Roger’s doing it for the good of baseball,” he said. “The extra proceeds on the game might go to the (Astros’) community charity deal to build (baseball) fields, do something positive out of it.”
If Clemens, who pitched for the Yankees from 1999-2003 and then again in 2007 does indeed want to pitch for a team in the majors this year, Crane said a team would obviously accommodate him – so why not the Astros?
“What we’re interested in, we’ve talked to him about, is teaching our young pitchers, not necessarily taking a full-time coach (role), but working with them consistently, the young guys, and that’s what I’ve talked to him about at length, is starting next year, is getting a lot of our young prospects in giving them the mentality and the work ethic and the training,” Crane said. “There’s a double-edged sword. I think if we were able to let him do (pitch), we’d want to blend that in.”
The owner said he would seek approval from Major League Baseball before making any decisions on Clemens’ future as an Astro.