After announcing plans to retire, Rogers Clemens decided to play another season for his hometown Houston Astros. Click to enlarge photo.
photo by Tim Evearitt
Bill Clinton loved to call himself the comeback kid but Major League baseball had its share of comebacks this past season.
Roger Clemens came back from The Short Goodbye to add to his Cy Young Award collection in a new league.
The Boston Red Sox, going where no men had gone before, came back from an 0-3 hole in the American League Championship Series to stun the Yankees on their way to that long-overdue World Series title.
In between, the Houston Astros, who had a losing record as late as Aug. 22, stormed into the playoffs with 31 wins in their last 39 games, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays needed little more than a month to become the first team ever to rise from 18 games below (10-28 on May 19) to over .500 (36-35 on June 26).
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Personal reappearing acts were also all the rage.
The Angels' Troy Glaus and the Phillies' Pat Burrell, both deemed lost for the season with injuries to shoulder and wrist, respectively, came back to help their teams down the stretch.
Jim Crowell came back to pitch for the Phillies on 2,415 days' rest -- the elapsed time between big-league appearances on Sept. 27, 1997, and May 6, 2004.
Eric Gagne merely came back to earth, his saves streak ending at 84 on July 5.
2004 had it all.
Streaks: 10 winning streaks of nine-plus games. Slides: Three years after winning a World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks lost a Major League-worst 111 games.
Sensations: A library's worth, but one example captures both the season's flavor and the game's grip.
On May 12, in the seventh inning of a game at Dodger Stadium, Alex Cora stepped into the box to face Cubs right-hander Matt Clement. After the count reached 2-1, Clement had to make 15 more pitches. Cora fouled off the first 14, then deposited No. 15 in the right-field pavilion.
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It was a season jammed with transcendental moments. Breaking it down, for the time capsule ...
A Day in the Life . . .
May 28: The opening of Memorial Day Weekend is memorable, all right, as Cleveland's Casey Blake, Philadelphia's Tomas Perez, San Francisco's Barry Bonds, and the Pirates' Rob Macowiak and Craig Wilson -- the latter two in a twin-bill sweep of the Cubs -- all hit walk-off homers. Wait, there's more: Paul Konerko of the White Sox and Tony Graffanino of the Royals end games with walk-off singles.
June 11: Snake eyes. The Cardinals' Reggie Sanders steals his 11th base, hits his 11th double and clouts his 11th homer, all on ... check the date.
July 4: Patriotic zeal. Or Zeile. The Mets' Todd Zeile improves his lifetime average on this date to .525, which makes perfect sense considering his family tree is said to include President John Adams (who, incidentally, died on July 4, 1826 -- probably more information than you need to know).
July 21: Bookend blasts. Oakland's Mark Kotsay homers on the game's first pitch, and Seattle's Bucky Jacobsen homers on the game's last pitch. It's been done before, but not since Sept. 13, 1990, by Eric Yielding of the Astros and Barry Larkin of the Reds.
Aug. 8: Shaken, not stirred. In Detroit, Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield becomes the first pitcher in 64 years to allow six homers -- and the first in 72 years to win despite such generosity.
Sept. 1: A game for the aged. Twins left-hander Terry Mulholland and catcher Pat Borders comprise MLB's first game-starting battery of 41-year-olds since June 3, 1945, when Curt Davis started for the Brooklyn Dodgers and was caught by Clyde Sukeforth.
Sept. 15: Why we play the games. Seattle right-hander Ryan Franklin pits his 3-15 record and 5.30 ERA against the Angels' MLB-leading .286 team average, and comes away with a complete-game two-hitter.
Sept. 19: The Colorado Rockies (to the Dodgers) and the Denver Broncos (to Jacksonville) both lose, 7-6.
Sept. 30: With apologies to Shakespeare, all the world's actually a diamond. The following is verbatim, from an Associated Press report (nationalities added): "The Dodgers tied it in the bottom half off Chin-hui Tsao (Taiwan) when Hee-Seop Choi (Korea) doubled, took third as Tsao threw wildly to first on Cesar Izturis' (Venezuela) sacrifice bunt and scored on Jayson Werth's (U.S.) forceout. Yhency Brazoban (Dominican Republic) blanked the Rockies in the 11th."
Chattanooga BellSouth Park comeback
Former Lookouts' manager Phillip Wellman returned to Chattanooga as the interim hitting coach for the Greenville Braves.
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Adapted from article on the MLB.com website.