Roger Clemens debut with the Skeeters

As promised, my write-up of the debut of Roger Clemens with the Sugar Land Skeeters.

First off, it was the first time I've been at Constellation Field, which opened earlier this year. It is a nice looking little ballpark. Attendance was about 7,700, standing room only. They had about a third the number of parking spots needed and we ended up parking in a sea of mud outside the regular parking (it had been raining most of the day).

No word if the ambulance was there in case Roger blew out his arm. My company had a group outing in the Mazda Performance Picnic Plaza. Here's our view of home plate.

Not really great but the food was good (and free since my company paid for it). Above the right and left field bleachers are luxury boxes. Practically everything in the stadium has a corporate name on it.

As you may have guessed the team mascot is a giant mosquito. It probably has a name but I missed it.
Roger was announced and all the camera people ran over and then had to wait for several minutes before he actually appeared.

 Note all the people in the stands with the blue Skeeters shirts. These all had "Clemens" on the back.

We were too far away to get many photos of Roger. This was taken on 10x zoom with my Nikon digital. And the light was getting poor. But I'll say that Roger looked in shape.  He pitched 3 1/3 innings and according to the paper the next day, hit 88 mph on hos fastball. Not quite sure why he was pulled. I'm guessing they had him on a pitch count. Or maybe Roger suddenly thought, "What am I doing out here? I'm a millionaire, I don't need this".

He struck out 3, didn't walk anybody and gave up a single. I can well imagine Roger would be effective against the collection of former weres and never will bes making up this league. The Skeeters when on to win the game 1-0.  One of the Skeeters outfielders had a .111 average after getting a hit in the game. I'm not sure how much further you can fall if you're hitting .111 in the Atlantic League.

As befitting a minor league park there was all kinds of promotions, mostly involving kids, between innings. There was this weird looking collection of cartoon animals that came out between innings. They may be from a Saturday morning cartoon series.

The short thing was named Snail Earnhardt and the tall thing had a name that was a pun on Yao Ming's name. The inning before, a giant clam with legs, named Roger Clamons (get it?) came out and ate somebody. It spit out various items of the guy's clothing and then the guy himself, near naked, who ran off the field.   The promotion for the night was supposed to be a stuntman who was going to set himself on fire and run around the bases after the game. He got scratched.

The game was pretty dull. We left in the 7th because I was afraid it would be a nightmare getting out of the mud. Here are the current standings in the Atlantic League.

Note where all the other teams in the league are. The league's travel budget must have increased substantially to account for the Skeeters. The Skeeters have 23 games to play.