"Don't marry lesbians": Roger Clemens' first 20 strikeout game on 4/29/86, random advice, dubious record

Wednesday 5/6/26

I was watching Roger Clemens' first 20 strikeout game the other day from April 1986. He falls behind in counts quite a bit early in that game which could have gone differently for him, I feel, rather easily. Like if he had walked the first two batters, as he nearly did. But he struck them out. Fastball after fastball. Just throwing heat. Sometimes the curve.

What a fastball it was, though. One of the best ever. The delivery was beautiful. The perfect pitcher. Perfect pitcher's build, like Ray Bourque had the perfect build for a hockey player. The leg drive.

The broadcast team of Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery was its own treat. The kind you don't get anymore. If you go somewhere after you die where it's the best this, the best that, the thing of every kind of thing you love the most, for me it'd be the best writing, the Grateful Dead, Rockport, and Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery calling games.

But I would still like to have those things in this world first. The old broadcasts exist, after all. For me I'd need to have the rest of it in place to experience them as I'd like to.

I posted the following on social media yesterday:

I was watching Roger Clemens’ first 20 strikeout game from April 1986 the other night. He basically went with fastball after fastball, blowing it past Mariners batters. Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery had the call. I could watch a Red Sox team go 0-162 and still look forward to tuning in with that duo. Learned, convivial, witty. Such a stark contrast with our age.

Someone replied with this:

I was on my honeymoon and I mentioned this game and it's importance, she shrugs. We eventually divorce, and she becomes a huge fan of baseball. Long story short, don't marry lesbians.

That's colorful. I see that he's a grandfather. Also, a fellow who posts sports memes (like AI-generated Drake Maye looming over an AI city, Godzilla-style), which I think says all we need to know about any person. If you don't use words that are your words (meaning, you're not doing the "lives rent free," "hill to die on," "check's notes" idiocy), if you also use memes and gifs and what not, and emojis, then you are, well, what you are. I don't feel a need to spell that out in this entry.

Unfortunately, this is going to be almost everyone. Intelligent people of quality scarcely exist now. I think of the few dozen who do as they wander this earth. It's like they should be meeting in a secret room to interact with each other; a place where they can avoid detection and persecution. And that they should have secret hand signals.

Anyway, at least this response wasn't boring and his grammar sound.

I find that one or the other is the most credit I can very occasionally give just about anyone. Because it isn't just that people are stupid, simple, lazy, interchangeable; it's that they're boring. They don't have a single interesting thought kicking around in their heads.

Look at social media. The sharing of seemingly every last thought. And yet, note how few are interesting. We don't even have interesting thoughts by accident every now and again, stumble into one as it were.

That may be the most depressing aspect of social media, but there is no shortage of contenders for that top spot.

Granddad reminded of this guy who posted on Reddit a bunch of months ago about how he'd lost his high school free throw percentage shooting record from the early 1970s on account of...something. A rule change as to minimum requirements, or some zoning matter.

He was super specific, though, about his stats. The league his school was in, the old record he'd bested, and the person who now has the record and how he became apprised of this new development.

I thought, wow, does he view this as the most important thing he's ever done or will ever do? And now it's a non-thing.

He didn't sound in crisis, exactly, but less of himself as he had perceived himself. Someone who'd lost a defining aspect of themselves. Their identity, as they saw it.

People commented, taking what the guy said seriously. For he was serious. He'd respond to them with more facts and specifics.

And then, after quite a bit of this, he made another comment--as if to himself as much as anyone else--that he had one record that would never be broken, and that was when he fingered the algebra teacher on the bus on the way to prom. No one could take that one away from him. He called it "the only record that really matters."