Roger Clemens donned a banana-colored jersey to make his umpteenth return to baseball.
Clemens, 61, surprisingly pitched Saturday night for the Savannah Bananas — a popular barnstorming exhibition baseball team — in front of a crowd of about 41,000 at Houston’s Minute Maid Park.
He gave up three hits, including a home run, and retired one batter against the rival Party Animals.
The seven-time Cy Young Award winner — who indecisively retired and unretired several times late in his 24-year career — last pitched in MLB in 2007, for the Yankees.
He pitched in two games for the independent professional Atlantic League’s Sugar Land Skeeters — based in a suburb of his hometown of Houston — in 2012, so that he could throw to his son Koby behind the plate.
Five runs, including both runners that he inherited, scored while Clemens was on the mound for the Bananas.
So what? Clemens, who wore No. 22 on the back of the yellow jerseys with blue lettering, still received plenty of high-fives after he walked back to the dugout and big cheers from the crowd.
The surprises for the mostly Astros fans in the building didn’t end with Clemens.
Roy Oswalt, a 46-year-old former three-time All-Star and League Championship Series MVP, also pitched one-third of an inning and recorded a strikeout after surrendering three hits.
Clemens and Oswalt were Astros teammates from 2004-06.
The Bananas are like a dancing, baseball-playing version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The Party Animals are their frequently beaten-down nemesis, similar to the Washington Generals.
Saturday marked their first appearance in a MLB ballpark — instead of traditional minor-league stadiums — but there are five more stops on the schedule in 2024, including one at historic Fenway Park in Boston.
Because of allegations that he was connected to performance-enhancing drugs, Clemens was not selected to the Hall of Fame during his 10 turns on the ballot, never receiving more than the 65.2 percent of the vote that he got in his last year of eligibility (2022).
But his 354 wins are second to contemporary Greg Maddux (355) among pitchers who played after 1965.
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