What's the appeal?

I don't understand the hoopla over Roger Clemens pitching for the Lexington Legends. Is regular season baseball so boring that a guy coming out of retirement to play for a third place team is cause for media to descend on Lexington to see him throw three innings? Considering he's going to be around for just over half their games, how much impact can he really make? He'll probably pitch fewer than 20 games, so how many more wins will that give them (it's highly unlikely he'll win every game he starts) compared to the rest of the staff?

Why the excitement for locals? Sure, he's a great pitcher, but so what? Cincinnati is an hour away and they get good pitchers going against major leaguers. Clemens pitched three innings against development players. It might as well have been batting practice. I don't remember people getting this excited when the Bulls and Michael Jordan came to Lexington to play an exhibition in the late 90s, and they were the defending champs. They were also facing other NBA players, and yet I don't think that game was even a sellout. Someone told me Clemens pitching for the Legends was bigger because he would be pitching for the local team. That's crap. How many people know how the Legends are even doing this year? How many people know whether or not Lexington won the game he started? Plus, single A is a development league where winning is nice but secondary. That's why training and rehab starts are often done there. They don't want to disrupt the major league lineups while finding out what someone can do.

I do have to give Clemens some credit. Of all the names mentioned as possible steroid users by Jose conscious, he and Barry Bonds were the only ones that weren't called before the Congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball. Come to think of it, Clemens has pretty much been given a free pass on the steroid issue. Of course, just because he looked washed-up and out of shape at the end of his Red Sox career, but managed to turn it around and have career years up into his 40s is no reason to think steroids could be involved. That would be silly. Late career resurgence by power pitchers are very common. There's Clemens and ...... well, Clemens. Still, assuming he might take steroids during baseball's steroid era is just plain wrong. It would be like assuming steroid use when a hitter who never had more than 46 home runs during his first 14 seasons suddenly averages over 50 late in his 30s. And, coincidentally looks like he ate another player. Still, that's just unfounded suspicion. He could very well have gotten back into shape through hard work and human growth hormones.

Actually, I always figured Bonds got a lot of steroid grief for several reasons. He was connected to people at BALCO when the proverbial steroid crap hit the fan, had doubled in size, was breaking records and hadn't retired like Sosa and McGwire. Plus, he's an ass. But so is Clemens. He burns bridges whenever he leaves a team. He gets it into his contract that he doesn't have to go on road trips when he isn't scheduled to pitch. He indicated that he would want to sign with a playoff contender if he un-retired then turned down three of them to sign with a sub-.500 team that offered more money. He's so obsessed with himself that he set his latest contract at $22,000,022 because his uniform number is 22. He also gave names that begin with "K" (abbreviation for strikeouts) to all his kids. What is there about Roger Clemens that would make me root for him?