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| Francisco Liriano | Roger Clemens |
| 6 - 1, 2.16 | 0 - 0, --- |
One of the coolest things about seeing Roger Clemens pitch is that everytime he does anything--no matter how trivial it might seem--it possesses a good deal of historical weight.
Like check it out, last night Lance Berkman hits a milestone homer, his 200th. Which is cool, don't get us wrong. Less than 300 people in the history of the universe have hit 200 major league homers. But still, with 1000 major league baseball players running around, the act of hitting your 200th isn't really all that rare. At the very least, Jeff Conine and Magglio Ordoñez had already hit their 200th this year before Lance connected , and Carl Everett would actually hit his 200th later that night.
So Lance is in an exclusive club, but it's not THAT exclusive.
Let me emphasize, this is not like Roger. His clubs tend to be extremely exclusive.
Again, whatever he does, it's historic. Like, tonight is career start # 672, and it's been almost 14 years since anyone started their 672nd game.
Rocket will undoubtedly strike out a batter this evening (maybe it'll be Torii Hunter!), and when he does, it will be number 4,503. And it's been just short of nineteen years since anyone's done that.
Roger will be going for win # 342 tonight, and it's been 43 years since a pitcher has been able to notch a victory that high on the charts. In a nice bit of congruency, win number 342 for Warren Spahn came against the Houston National League franchise. The date was August 18, 1963. Spahn went the route and struck out only one Colt .45 on that long ago night, and Clemens is neither likely to go so long, nor strike out so few. But Spahn kept his walks down--limiting the free passes to a single ninth inning base on balls to Bob Aspromonte.--and we can certainly hope that Roger emulates that part of Spahn's game.
Clemens is also likely to give up his 4000th hit to some Twin or the other tonight, although it's not been that long at all since the last guy to give up his 4000th hit did so, as Greg Maddux gave up his 4000th safety less than one year ago.