Finally, I got a 20-year old trivia question answered.
As of this date, Roger Clemens (NYY) has made 692 regular-season appearances. All but one has been as a starter. I had always wanted to see what Clemens' only regular-season relief line looked like.
I finally found out. For those interested, here's some tidbits from that day: July 18, 1984 (thanks to baseballreference.com for the insight; geez, they're as detailed as you want them to be)...
Before 16,470 fans in Oakland on July 18, 1984, Clemens made his only relief appearance in the regular season in his career.
* He was the fourth of six pitchers Boston used in a 7-2 loss to Oakland at the Coliseum. The loss dropped Boston to 45-46 on the year.
* Boston starting pitcher was Oil Can Boyd, knocked out in the first inning having given up five runs. Also preceding Clemens were relievers Rich Gale & Steve Crawford. Following Clemens were pitchers Mark Clear & John Henry Johnson.
* Clemens pitched the fifth & sixth innings, allowing doubles to Carney Lansford & Rickey Henderson, but not allowing them to score.
* The line: 2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K.
* Dave Kingman of the A's hit his 26th homer of the season that day; he was in a homer race with Boston's Tony Armas Sr. at the time.
* Henderson stole his 45th base.
* The Red Sox were limited to four hits: singles by Mike Easler & Jackie Gutierrez, double by Wade Boggs, and homer by Armas Sr., his 25th.
* Oakland's winning pitcher was Ray Burris, going the distance.
LINE: 9 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 4 K.
You can obviously tell this was an emergency relief appearance for Clemens. This was just before the Red Sox made their July & August push for the AL East lead, dominated at the time by Detroit and Toronto.
Hope this satisfies the curiousities of people like me!
1 comment:
Thanks for writing this.
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