Astros owner Jim Crane open to having Roger Clemens make a start this season

Roger Clemens may be 50 years old and five years removed from baseball, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing his career. Clemens is scheduled to pitch for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League on Saturday, and if the rumors are true The Rocket still has some pretty nasty stuff in his arsenal. If he performs well this weekend and is interested in returning to the MLB, the Astros just might have him.

Astros owner Jim Crane told FOX 26 Sports on Thursday that he is open to the idea of having Clemens make a start for Houston this season. Sounds like a major publicity stunt for the worst team in baseball, doesn’t it? Crane insists that wouldn’t be the case.

“If it goes alright (with Sugar Land) and he comes to us, we’ll talk to baseball about it at length,” Crane said. “The only thing we don’t want to do is make it a publicity stunt. If we did it, I want to try and take it and turn it into a positive, which would be Roger’s doing it for the good of baseball. The extra proceeds on the game might go to the (Astros’) community charity deal to build (baseball) fields, do something positive out of it.”

If you’re making a baseball decision that has nothing to do with winning a baseball game, it’s always going to be viewed as a publicity stunt in some capacity. Raising money for charities would be nice, but the Astros would be lying if they said they aren’t desperate to sell tickets and salvage something from their abysmal season.

“I think the fans might like it,” Crane continued. “It might be fun and certainly get a few people in the ballpark. I don’t see anything negative about that, but the Astros wouldn’t want to do it for the money, the extra gate or anything like that.”

Would a sell out during a season in which your team ranks in the bottom four in the league in attendance be nice, Jim? You bet it would be.

H/T Hardball Talk
Photo via Sugar Land Skeeters