Roll up, roll up. The Clemens circus has announced its destination for 2007. The New York Yankees are the team lucky enough to have won the right to pay a forty-four year old pitcher a staggering amount of money to turn up at the stadium when he feels like it.

I taped the Phillies-Giants game on Five last night and deliberately kept away from the major baseball websites until I had watched it today. So I had no knowledge of the breaking news until they showed the footage of Clemens wearing a Yankees cap near the beginning of the show. It’s fair to say I was a bit shocked. Shocked by the timing at least, but not necessarily the news itself. I think everyone thought Clemens would be back in 2007 and it would either be in an Astros, Red Sox or Yankees uniform. The Astros’s small World Series hopes made them the outsiders and it looked like it would be a fascinating battle between the two AL East rivals as to who would sign him to a deal. Andy Pettitte’s presence made many (including myself) err on the side of New York and that proved correct.

Now, I’ve gone on record as being an opponent of Roger’s “I’ll do it my way” behaviour in recent years and I was interested to hear both Johnny and Josh sharing the same sentiments on Five last night. In all of the thousands of words that have greeted the news, it was the comments of Clemens’s agent, Randy Hendricks, that really annoyed me. Hendricks is quoted an MLB.com as saying: “From my point of view, he’s Roger Clemens,” Hendricks said. “When he says he’s ready to play, I think teams should listen.”

I’m not doubting Clemens’s standing as one of the all time great pitchers (no one could), but no single player is bigger than the team, let alone the sport, and to me this sort of attitude (i.e. “he’s Roger Clemens”) is completely wrong. A team shouldn’t let one player dictate how they should be treated, and a player with any respect for the organisation he is joining wouldn’t expect them to.

I appreciate this is an easier stance to take from the outside. Will Clemens improve the Yankees? Undoubtedly the answer is yes, so there’s a school of thought that says the Yankees had to do what they had to do. The fact that the Red Sox were also heavily interested in securing Clemens’s services only underlines this point. Still, from a neutral fan’s perspective I find the whole thing very uncomfortable.

Add in the fact that, despite getting a prorated $28 million salary, Clemens will enjoy additional perks such as not having to turn up to the stadium everyday, as his team mates are obliged to do. Going out of your way to make grand accommodations for a player is in complete contrast to the ethos of the importance of the team above the individual. The Yankees have stated that they consulted the current players about this issue, but they shouldn’t be put into this position in the first place. They all want to win and know that Clemens can help them, so they will go along with it regardless. That doesn’t make it right though.

Watching the footage of Clemens making his public announcement during the Yankees’s game yesterday was the kicker. The “look at me, I’m the hero coming to save the day” air of it all was horribly self-aggrandising.

Everyone involved has declared themselves committed to winning the World Series and if they do it then few will complain in the Bronx about Roger’s privileges. Personally, I won’t be shedding too many tears if their dreams are not realised and to my mind it would be in the best interests of baseball if the experiment fails (again).