Book Report

When you spend most of your time with Two Fat Guys, as I do, you soon realize that the options for leisure reading fall into one of three general categories: fiction, non-fiction, and menus.

It’s also true that as a member of this particular gang you learn that the most desirable leisure activities are of the passive variety such as watching, listening, spectating, etc. In an effort to break away from the pack (yes, Phil and Denny collectively qualify as a pack), I thought it might behoove me to celebrate my pre-TFGWNTD days and jump back into a more active pastime – reading books.

Don’t let it bother you that the reviews you might read here will never end up in the New York Times…after all, the Times doesn’t review the floats in the Macy’s Day Parade.



The Rocket That Fell To Earth Roger Clemens And the Rage For Baseball Immortality

Jeff Pearlman



Let’s start with a quick pop quiz. Roger Clemens:

A. Is living proof that hard work and an iron will makes all your dreams possible;

B. Is the world’s most self-centered, self-serving prick;

C. Has some really strange methods of preparing to pitch a game;

D. Will do whatever it takes, including cheat, to maintain success;

E. Is the inventor of Ray Ban sunglasses;

F. All of the above.

If you answered “F”, try not to get too much drool on the keyboard. But if you answered “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”, give yourself a point. You probably don’t need to read this book, because other than expand on these four facets of the former future Hall of Famer, there’s not a lot to Pearlman’s book.

Even the casual baseball fan knows that Clemens career followed this arc: Twelve or thirteen years into a certain first ballot HOF career, his body began to show the effects of age. Then, literally overnight, he not only revived his dominance, but actually took it to an even higher plane. We all sat astonished during the first years of the 2000’s as Clemens and Barry Bonds both took their respective games to unprecedented levels. It wasn’t until five years later that we knew for sure how they did it. Performance enhancing drugs, etc…etc…etc.

In Clemens case, this was a particular shame because of how he got there in the first place. Pearlman does a great job of detailing how Clemens went from the number three pitcher on his high school team to a JC, then the University of Texas, and then straight to the Red Sox. As Pearlman points out, the only performance enhancer employed was working his ass off. His training regimen makes Marine boot camp look like a Sunday school picnic.

Once Roger made it to the show and started to see his name in lights, he fell in love with the attention and bought hook line and sinker every line of hype ever written about him. His ego expanded to the point that during the last couple of years he played, he demanded (and received) a clause in his contract that he only had to show up at the ball park when he pitched. Although no teammate ever doubted his commitment to winning, he was generally not the most loved guy in the clubhouse.

One humorous (and painful) anecdote Pearlman reveals is Clemens’ pregame ritual of having the trainer smear his entire body with Icy Hot. His entire body. Entire. Leaving nothing out. By the time the trainer had rubbed the searing salve into his testicles, Clemens was literally snorting like a bull.

To this day, despite overwhelming and indisputable proof to the contrary, Clemens maintains that he never used steroids. That same trademark stubborn will that never allowed him to give in to a hitter now betrays him and paints him as not only a cheater, but a liar as well.

If you haven’t been around as a fan for the last fifteen years, especially the period of 2004 to 2007 when the steroid story exploded, then you probably would be greatly enlightened by this book. If you have been around, there’s not a whole lot new here, unless of course you’ve never read about someone preparing for a game by having a paid employee rub Icy Hot on…hmmm.