Roger Clemens biography

After another mesmerizing season, in 1998—Clemens led the league in wins, strikeouts and ERA to earn a fifth Cy Young Award—Toronto traded Clemens to the New York Yankees. In 1999, he helped lead New York to a World Series win, the first title of his career. A second championship followed in 2000, as did his sixth Cy Young Award in 2001.

In 2004, after stepping out of retirement, Clemens pitched for his hometown Houston Astros. Over the next three years,

he earned a seventh Cy Young Award, and led the club to its first-ever World Series appearance. Following another flirtation with retirement, Clemens returned to the New York Yankees in 2007, for what turned out to be his final season.

Throughout his long career, Clemens won 354 regular season games and recorded 4,672 strikeouts. Twice, in 1986 and 1996, he struck out 20 batters in a game—a statistic that no pitcher before him had achieved.

Steroid Scandal

In December of 2007, Clemens was included in a much-publicized report on baseball's steroid use by former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell. The report alleged that Clemens had taken banned substances in 1998, 2000 and 2001—charges that Clemens has vehemently denied. Most famously, Clemens went before Congress in 2008 and refuted any use of performance enhancement drugs.

However, as evidence pointing to Clemens's steroid use mounted—most notably by his former trainer, Brian McNamee—so did questions about his truthfulness. In 2010, Clemens was ensnared in more legal trouble, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of perjury and making false statements to Congress.

In July of 2011, Clemens received an unexpected victory: His perjury trial was thrown out on the first day of proceedings. The judge on the case, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, called a halt to the trial after prosecutors showed jurors evidence that he had already ruled out—a video of a teammate revealing he'd told his wife that Clemens had confessed to using a drug.

In April of 2012, a second perjury trial against Clemens began. The case included one charge of obstruction of Congress, three charges of making false statements and two charges of perjury, and if convicted of all six of his charges, Clemens faced a maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine. This time around, however, the verdict was in favor of the former baseball star: Clemens was acquitted of all perjury charges in June 2012. His acquittal reignited talk about Clemens being a candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In August 2012, Clemens made his first television appearance since his June 2012 acquittal—on CBS This Morning—and spoke about his feelings on his candidacy for the Baseball Hall of fame. "It's not going to change my life either way," he said during an interview with Charlie Rose Thursday, co-host of This Morning. "The Hall of Fame is great. I've got a lot of great buddies there. The guys that are there paved the way for me to do what I love to do and make a lot of money doing it, take care of my family."