Final farewell just mediocre for Clemens

Life is full of small, poignant moments, and every once in a while, we're lucky enough to actually notice them. One such time came Sunday as Roger Clemens trotted across the outfield grass before the third game of this year's Yankees-Indians divisional series matchup — potentially the last start of Clemens' illustrious career — with every eye in the stands riveted upon him.

The lack of formal ceremony was both disappointing and fitting. No music pumped from the stadium speakers to proclaim the Rocket's entrance. A few hundred feet away, a couple of stray Indians players stretched languidly and watched with a certain nervous interest. The grounds crew carried on with their carefully choreographed business, smoothing and watering the infield to insure Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez wouldn't see any strange hops later that night.

Homer sang of the gods taking the field at Ilium. But for those of us who live several mundane millennia separated from the age of heroes, we must be contented by this spectacle. And what a spectacle it was, with the most storied franchise in baseball on the brink of elimination. Even the last strains of dying sunlight, delightfully cliche, seemed to sign off on the series. The world was at last giving Roger — and the Yankees — permission to rest.

In his Camelot, surrounded by the cavernous gray stone of the closest thing New York has to Notre Dame, soon to play the sport that the city almost worships, Clemens succeeded in assuming the mythical proportions of a dying demigod without any pyrotechnics or ostentatious embellishment.

Naturally, I was quite pleased with the atmosphere of impending doom that hung around the stadium. Of all the sports franchises that have wronged Cleveland in some way or other over the years, the Yankees aren't really among the worst. Michael Jordan's Bulls have certainly made us just as miserable, and in a more direct fashion.

Yet among all sports franchises, the Yankees alone have earned my deep and abiding distaste. I have to believe this has something to do with the fact that the Yankees management model in the past decade has basically ratified the idea that might makes right—or, at the very least, the playoffs. Now Cleveland could rob them of their poisoned prize: postseason success, which George Steinbrenner shelled out more than $200 million this year to ensure.

Somewhere along the way, however, the script fell by the wayside. Perhaps the Indians, like many others, felt overburdened by the role of team of destiny when faced with the only true extant baseball dynasty. Perhaps the clips of "300" being played on the Jumbotron—"This is where we fight!"—inspired the dormant Yankees bats (thankfully for New York, the players likely didn't think too deeply about the irony inherent in using that particular movie).

Clemens didn't make it out of the third inning, tossing a game that fell short of mediocre. Yet the power of the pinstripes prevailed in the latter innings behind a Johnny Damon home run and some exceptional hitting from Robinson Cano, and the fabled Mariano Rivera tossed a perfect ninth inning. Rivera's game-ending strikeout of Indians star Travis Hafner, on three straight cut fastballs, was tragicomic. The final score was 8-4.

Afterwards, there was a dead feeling in my gut. Having lived in Cleveland through the heyday of the Tribe and the team's subsequent downfall, I badly wanted to see proof positive of the Indians' resurgent fortunes. I pondered how strange and alien the mass of Yankees fans seemed in my eyes, even if they fell short of being the Philistines that the oft-used David and Goliath metaphor makes them out to be. How can they possibly root for such a team?

This is not to say that they were boorish. The vast majority of fans ranged from jokingly belligerent to oddly polite: One silver-haired man walked up to us afterwards and took our hands, offering condolences while pointing out that our team still led the series. The three men sitting next to us were more than willing to talk baseball, happily speculating on whether Rodriguez would opt out of his contract and whether Rivera would get a new deal.

One fan caught my attention in particular: On the way down, we passed a boy no older than 10 who screamed, "Go back to Cleveland!" My friends and I couldn't help laughing at that. If I could have, I would have shaken his hand.

A musty sort of nostalgia overtook me at that instant. It could have been 1995 again. Memories flooded me: my dad tossing slow, arcing pitches while I took wild hacks; my old Easton bat a gray blur, the aluminum scarred white from the bleached leather with a few red sores from contact on the seams. The world was our batting cage, the sunset our pitch limit.

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That year, the Indians stampeded over the American League with a thunderous offense and solid pitching. A poster of Orel Hershiser, my favorite pitcher, was the sole adornment on my walls; I simply wouldn't let anything else profane that sacred image. In the World Series, Hershiser faced off against future Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux twice. He lost the first game, only to come back with eight innings of two-run ball in the fifth game — staving off elimination, for two short, sweet days.

I imagine love of any team — even those we hate — must be instilled in the same manner, and this thought consoled me immensely. The fervent fandom in New York enables the egregious payroll inequity with which the Yankees bludgeon other teams, but the innocence of its origins made me less bitter. Who can't sympathize? There's certainly part of me that can never escape those childhood summers, that doesn't really want to escape.

Some clever marketing executive had it right: I don't particularly want to grow up. Adulthood comes with its host of interesting privileges, but I can't shake the feeling that we pay a healthy premium. The world is never quite as clean again, joy never quite as pure, worries never quite as distant. And even such momentous moments are, in the end, only moments. Outside, the steel shriek of the subway is always waiting to bear us back.