From his obscure youth as a pudgy‚ unremarkable nobody in suburban Ohio to the mounds of Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium‚ Roger "Rocket" Clemens is an American icon‚ and perhaps the greatest pitcher in Major League history. He played professional baseball from 1984 to 2007 -- for the Boston Red Sox‚ Toronto Blue Jays‚ New York Yankees‚ and Houston Astros. In his 24-year career‚ Clemens amassed an unprecedented seven Cy Young Awards (two more than any other pitcher) and became one of only four pitchers in baseball history to achieve more than 4‚000 strikeouts.
His athletic prowess aside‚ Clemens also embodies a fascinating dichotomy in American culture: an athletic red state/blue state divide that has sports fans taking sides. To thousands of fans‚ Clemens is a tobacco-chewing‚ fastball-throwing legend who walks with the giants of the world. To many others‚ he is a gun-toting‚ Republican-voting‚ steroid-using pedophile who slept with fifteen-year-old country singer Mindy McCready when he was almost thirty and who stalked Charlize Theron.
In THE ROCKET THAT FELL TO EARTH‚ New York Times bestselling author Jeff Pearlman will do what he does best: He will deliver an exhaustively researched‚ brilliantly written biography that explores who Roger Clemens is; what he means to our country; and how his rise to baseball stardom and fall to personal humiliation speaks volumes about the current state of sport in America.
