Lee Jenkins of the New York Times wrote a good little story that further underscores the relationship that existed between Roger Clemens and his mother Bess, and illuminates a portion of what Clemens went through last night. I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for insanely talented multi-millionaires, but it must have been difficult, having made the decision to pitch, for Roger to field all the questions after the game about whether he had pitched the game for his mother, or what his mindset had been at any particular point. Just for one exceptional night, couldn't Roger decide to do something without having to explain exactly why to the press?
He loved his mother; he thought pitching was the right thing to do. That should have been enough, at least for Wednesday.
More happily, it was hard not to notice that both "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" played important if supporting roles in last night's victory. Given a second try, Qualls was in fact able to throw LoDuca a slider away. And after disposing of himself on one pitch three of four times Tuesday, Lance Berkman saw 24 pitches in his five plate appearances last night.
I may have seemed slightly hysterical when talking about Beckett's pitch count Tuesday, but you saw what we did against Todd Jones then, and what we did against Florida's middle relief Wednesday. Anything Lance might have done to force McKeon to go to that middle bullpen would only have helped the Astros. . . .