Parenting & Family Quote by Roger Clemens

Clemens is doing two things at once here: positioning himself as a mentor and quietly policing the boundaries of who deserves the pipeline to pro ball. The surface read is generous - an older star who "loves to work with the younger kids". But the sentence is laced with gatekeeping clauses: "if in fact that's what they plan on doing after college", "a very select few", "when you do have the opportunity". He frames the dream not as a right you chase, but a scarce commodity you earn by acting correctly when it appears.

That scarcity talk matters in sports culture because it’s the moral language that justifies an unforgiving system. By stressing that only a select few get the shot, Clemens turns inequality into a character test: the worthy "take advantage of it". It’s the familiar meritocratic story athletes are encouraged to repeat, partly because it flatters the speaker’s own trajectory. If the ladder is brutally narrow, then making it up looks like proof of exceptional will, not also luck, timing, coaching, health, and access.

There’s also a subtle self-rehabilitation embedded in the mentor pose. Clemens’ career is inseparable from controversy, and mentorship is a way to reclaim legitimacy: wisdom handed down, the game’s values preserved. Even the casual "you know" reads like clubhouse authenticity, an attempt to sound less like a brand statement and more like hard-earned truth. The intent is motivational, but the subtext is clear: dreams are fine, but only if you’re prepared to be judged by how efficiently you convert them into results.