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LINCICOME: Looking to strut, Yankees only staggered

Published June 22, 2007 at midnight

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Win No. 350 was lost at 2:45 p.m., Mountain Time, a zone the Yankees are glad to be out of, and Roger Clemens, too.

The Rocket's last fastball was a dull 88 mph, hardly a rocket, more like a glider, and Matt Holliday smacked it smartly to center field, permitting Kaz Matsui to clip third base on his way home before Johnny Damon picked up the ball.

Just 4 1/3 innings in, that would be it for the great Clemens, the pitcher of the lives of most of the Rockies, of the lives of a great deal of the weekday audience at Coors Field, again enduring the inconvenience of witnessing baseball live, but happily willing for the right attraction.

As if the Yankees, who are always preceded by great jangle and clatter, were not appeal enough, there was Clemens trying to become the first major leaguer to win 350 games since Warren Spahn did it in 1963, already residing at a level of legend rare and remarkable.

Consider that Troy Tulowitzki was not yet born when Clemens had already won nine of his 349 and struck out 126 of his 4,625, so when Tulowitzki took Clemens 440 feet deep the first time he faced him, there should be no greater signal that the end is past for the old Texan.

"I watched Roger as a little kid," Tulo- witzki said, "blowing people away. To be able to say I hit a home run off him, no one would ever believe it."

Belief is an easier sell here three days later than it was when the Yankees, then the hottest team in baseball, showed up. They had, after all, scored 41 runs the last time through in 2002, and during their batting practices it showed that they expected to do the same again.

They indulged themselves in a game of who could hit the ball the farthest, and instead of grooving swings for the game, the Yankees would loop under the ball, trying to carry it deep.

For the three games, they hit one home run, and scored only five. Alex Rodriguez, the major league leader in homers, barely got the bat on the ball, striking out four times, and two of his three hits didn't get out of the infield.

The most admired of the Yankees, the solid center of the team, Derek Jeter, ran the bases as if he had never been there before, running twice into outs on Thursday.

The Yankees came looking to strut around the bases and, typified by Clemens' slow stroll back to the dugout, found themselves staggering out of town. They found honest major league pitching, even if they did have to read the back of the Rockies' shirts to find out who it was getting them out.

Later on, when the Red Sox are just out of reach, the Yankees might ask who were those guys again in Colorado? And the answer would be Josh Fogg, Jeff Francis and Rodrigo Lopez, not to forget Manny Corpas and Brian Fuentes and their helpers out of the bullpen.

In beating Mike Mussina, Andy Pet- titte and Clemens, the Rockies were not just slumming with afterthoughts. This on top of beating other American League notables such as Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett, not to mention getting the best of Houston's Roy Oswalt.

Considering all of this, the word "fluke" no longer jumps immediately to mind.

"We can play with anybody," said Tulowitzki. "But we can't look at this as our season."

Still, no matter what happens now, the Rockies will always have this, and Rockies fans will have the delight in recalling the day they brought brooms to the park to wave at the Yankees and at Clemens.

Clemens has so far been more a curiosity than a savior for the Yankees, winning one and losing two since coming back. His goal, he said, was to help the present Yankees get a World Series ring since, poor babies, only four or five of them have one.

More likely Clemens keeps doing it because he can, and because he gets paid very well to disrupt his life only slightly.

A fan's sign at Coors posed the question, "We know New York is expensive, but $28 million for a dinosaur?"

Surely this is Clemens' last visit to Denver, though one never knows with a man who treats retirement like a cafeteria menu, picking and choosing, going back for seconds and thirds.

In fact, before the game, Clemens and manager Joe Torre laughed at a mock video depicting Clemens asking for another turn with the Yankees in 2057 when Clemens would be 95 years old.

Before the Rockies got to Clemens, it seemed funny. Now, it just seems sad.