From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Irony (I•ro•ny) incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity.

This week, Roger Clemens will presumably go for his 300th career victory against his former team, the Boston Red Sox. There is a certain irony there.

Roger Clemens established a stellar career while playing for 13 seasons in Boston, where he tied Cy Young for most career wins as a Red Sox (192). He won three Cy Young awards for Boston, and has won another three Cys in Toronto (two) and New York (one). The man who is tied with Cy Young for most Sox victories has more Cy Young awards than any other pitcher. Irony, maybe.

The New York Yankees play 162 games this season, 19 of them — 11.7 percent — against the Boston Red Sox. Therefore, the odds were approximately one in 10 that Clemens — who entered the season with 293 career wins — would perhaps face Boston to secure his 300th win. The odds that he would even get the opportunity to face them for both victories number 299 and 300 were approximately one in 20, but more likely longer than that. Yet #299 was secured at soggy Fenway Park last Wednesday, and #300 is on tap for (weather permitting) Memorial Day at Yankee Stadium. Isn’t it ironic?, as Alanis Morrissette would ask.

Did the schedule-makers, ruled by some cruel vendetta against Red Sox fans, choose to look at the upcoming 2003 schedule last off-season and say, "Well, Roger needs seven wins to reach 300 wins for his career. He wins approximately two of every three starts, given his 293-151 career record entering the season, so he’ll probably be getting that seventh win around his 10th start of the year. Barring injury and penciling him in as the top starter on the Yankees, let’s assume that his 10th start of the season would fall in mid May. Why don’t we put the Yankees in Boston on, say, May 19-21, then throw in one more series in-between, then bring the Sox back to New York the next series after that? It could just work out."

And it has. And there are a couple of other interesting twists on how this whole thing played out. Roger could have been going for #300 in Boston last week, which would have really gotten Yankee owner George Steinbrenner in a lather over the issues of "a different stage" hosted by his nemesis, Larry Lucchino, the lost revenue that could have been generated by a full house in the Bronx to witness the event, along with the souvenir-stand bonanza that such a landmark event would have created. But Clemens lost at home to the Rangers on May 16th, thereby obliterating the possibility of a Fenway milestone. And one of the main culprits in Texas’s 8-5 victory at Yankee Stadium that night? Carl Everett, the only man despised by Red Sox nation nearly as much, if not more, than the Rocket himself — and a man who despises the Yankees with all his heart.

The other interesting footnote is that the series the Yankees play in between the two Sox series is against the Toronto Blue Jays, Clemens’ "other" former team, a team from which he demanded a trade after two Cy Young seasons. At the time, Clemens was looking to take advantage of a gentleman’s agreement that then-Jays president Paul Beeston had made with the Rocket when he came to Toronto, that gave Clemens the right to ask for and receive a trade if he thought the Blue Jays were not displaying enough commitment to winning. Therefore, Clemens was offered and accepted a trade to the world-champion Yankees — which picked up the two years and $16.1 million remaining on his contract — in return for pitcher David Wells and three other players, even though he had gone 41-13 in his two seasons north of the border, and the ’98 Jays team won 88 games and had finished just four games behind Boston in the wild-card race.

Red Sox fans don’t know how to look at Roger anymore. One side maintains that Clemens, a native of the Lone Star State, always said that Boston or one of the Texas teams would be the only franchises he would ever play for, and come free-agent time, it wouldn’t be about the money. This faction of disgruntled fans still believes that the Rocket dogged it during his final four years here, going just 40-39 while missing numerous starts to injury — in part, the critics say, because he was so out of shape. The anti-Roger contingent continues: he went to Toronto specifically because of the money; he then got himself into the best shape of his career just to prove Red Sox management wrong in their lukewarm efforts to re-sign their free-agent icon; he then demanded a trade (even though he was part of a pretty good team and had been treated well financially), and actually approved the deal to the Yankees, the Red Sox’ (and presumably the Jays’) most bitter rival, joining fellow Sox alum Wade Boggs in collecting World Series hardware in 1999 (and for Roger, in 2000 as well).

Those who are rooting for Clemens’s bid for history note that the Rocket did play for those 13 seasons here, and he won three Cys in Boston, struck out a Major League–record 20 batters twice, and won 17 or more games seven straight times between 1986 and 1992.

In Roger’s defense, those last four years in Boston had him playing on teams that were 80-82, 54-61, 86-58, and 85-77, with only one of those seasons finding the team finishing higher than third place in the AL East. In 1993, after starting the season in sterling fashion, he hurt his groin in June and spent a month on the DL before returning — perhaps too early. Clemens lost 12 of his last 18 decisions that season to finish 11-14 with a 4.46 ERA. In ’94, the year that was cut short by the baseball strike, Globe columnist Gordon Edes recently noted that Clemens had better stats in five critical categories than that year’s Cy Young winner, David Cone, and that in Roger’s seven losses (against nine wins that year), the Sox scored a total of 15 runs during those outings. Additionally, his ERA of 2.85 and his strikeout total of 168 were second in the league. In 1995, Clemens went 10-5 with a 4.18 ERA and won seven of his last eight starts as the Sox — with just 86 wins — actually won the AL East by seven games over the pinstripers. And in 1996, Roger’s last year in a Boston uniform, he struggled to a 10-13 record, but seven of those losses were games in which the bullpen blew leads he had established. He nonetheless led the league in strikeouts with 257, and his 3.63 ERA, though seventh-best in the AL that season, would certainly be a stat coveted by any Major League team today. He also finished strong as the Sox’ bid to unseat the Yankees fell short that September, and he notched his second 20-K game in Detroit on September 18.

In retrospect, Roger’s desire to leave Boston was based more on his dislike of Sox management — at that time anchored by GM Dan Duquette — than his aversion to the city of Boston and its fans. And with hindsight being what it is, it should not be surprising that Clemens did walk, because Mo Vaughn did likewise a year later under similar circumstances, and the Duquette regime has now been outed as a heartless and cold-blooded administration that antagonized more than a handful of players, coaches, and GMs league-wide during the course of its rule.

Sure, Clemens went back on his statement that he’d only play in Boston or Texas, but players have a right to change their minds, and the financial and roster-related climates that existed in Houston and Arlington during those times ultimately did not prove as appealing to the free-agent Rocket as he would have liked, and returning to Boston was all but ruled out based on the latent disrespect and piddling sums the Sox ownership was offering him. When Toronto came in with four years, $31.5 million, Clemens without question set aside his loyalties and past statements and went for the cash, but it was mostly because he felt like he was no longer welcomed by the always-critical Boston fans and an organization that viewed him as being "in the twilight of his career."

Who among us, with those facts in hand, wouldn’t have made a similar decision?

Roger’s decision to get in shape was his way of saying that he was determined to prove Duquette and his minions wrong, and those seven years in the twilight — which have included 107 more wins, 1386 more strikeouts, two World Series titles, and three more Cy Young awards — have made that point in spades. Roger is still disliked in these parts by many who can’t get past the fact that he is a Yankee and has had such great success in the Bronx, but you can’t begrudge him the fact that he’s become a class act, has established himself as perhaps the best pitcher to ever play the game — and Boston can take pride in those roots — and, like it or not, is deserving of the accolades he’ll receive when he reaches the coveted 300-win echelon. And don’t forget: if Clemens had never left here, Pedro Martinez would certainly never have arrived.

Yes, there is a certain irony that Roger Clemens will get a chance to ring up this milestone achievement at the expense of his former team, but for Sox fans, if he has to get it against their team, better now than in September.

And whenever win #300 does happen, Red Sox fans should take a moment to forget that Roger bolted in the first place, forget that he became a Yankee, forget that he won two World Series in pinstripes, and just do what is appropriate and right.

Stand up and cheer.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com