The Boston Red Sox will open a three-game home series against the Minnesota Twins on Friday and use the weekend to honor roger clemens with a bobblehead giveaway tied to one of the most memorable starts of his career. Boston is set to hand out 7,500 bobbleheads to mark the 40th anniversary of Clemens’ 20-strikeout game.
That has put an unusual family twist on the matchup because Kody Clemens plays for the Twins and will be in Boston when the tribute takes place. “They had to have planned this,” Kody Clemens said. “I knew they were going to do a bobblehead. But to pick the same weekend?”
He called the scene “red carpet,” adding that it is “super cool for him to go back, and the fans love seeing him.” Kody Clemens also said his father “loves Boston” and that the team “have treated him really well over the last 40 years or whatever it’s been.”
The Red Sox honoring Clemens is not a surprise. He was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2014, long after establishing himself as a legendary pitcher, and the club has continued to recognize his place in its history. Friday’s giveaway is designed to lean into that past while the Twins are in town, giving the team’s current roster a front-row view of the celebration.
Kody Clemens, meanwhile, is trying to keep his own season moving. He is hitting.240 with four home runs and 12 RBIs for Minnesota, numbers that have given him steady work while he heads into a weekend that will be about much more than the box score. “It’s awesome,” he said of the tribute. “I have a ton of family — basically everybody’s coming for that weekend. No one is missing it. It’s a big crew.”
The timing makes Friday more than a simple stop on the schedule. Boston gets a chance to celebrate one of its most famous pitchers, while the Clemens family gets an uncommon overlap that turns a routine series into a personal one. For Kody Clemens, the trip comes with baseball on one field and a family reunion in the stands.
