Authors: Jeff Pearlman
ISBN-13: 9781616836009, ISBN-10: 1616836008
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: March 2009
Edition: Bargain
Jeff Pearlman is a columnist for SI.com, a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, and the critically acclaimed author of Boys Will Be Boys, The Bad Guys Won!, and Love Me, Hate Me.
A fearless, hard-nosed Texan with a 98-mph fastball and a propensity to throw at the heads of opposing hitters, Roger "the Rocket" Clemens won 354 games, an unprecedented seven Cy Young Awards, and two World Series trophies over the course of twenty-four seasons. But the statistics and hoopla obscured a far darker story-one of playoff chokes, womanizing (including a long-term affair with a teenage country singer), violent explosions, steroid and human growth hormone use...and an especially dark secret that Clemens spent a lifetime trying to hide: a family tragedy involving drugs and, ultimately, death.
In The Rocket That Fell to Earth, New York Times bestselling author Jeff Pearlman reconstructs the pitcher's life-from his Ohio childhood to the mounds of Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium-to reveal a flawed and troubled man whose rage for baseball immortality took him to superhuman heights before he crashed down to earth.
“Pearlman’s book develops a stark, unsparing picture of Clemens’s life that surpasses anything that’s come before.”
1 High Heat 1
2 Fat Boy from Ohio 6
3 Houston Bound 20
4 College 32
5 A Legendary Longhorn 43
6 Going Pro 60
7 Rah-jah in Beantown 73
8 The Can 83
9 Dominance 92
10 A Legend in Bloom 116
11 Baggage 131
12 Unraveling 141
13 The Ladies' Man 161
14 The Devil and Dan Duquette 167
15 War 178
16 Twilight 188
17 Under the Influence 202
18 A (Not So) Yankee Doodle Dandy 214
19 Happiness 226
20 Subway Crash 236
21 Greatness by Any Means Necessary 247
22 Ignorance and Bliss 262
23 Retirement 275
24 Bess 286
25 Credibility Lost 296
26 Dead Pitcher Walking 303
Epilogue 316
Acknowledgments 321
Notes 325
Bibliography 347