Clemens Adds AL’s MVP Award to Haul

Roger Clemens, who was 24-4 with a 2.48 earned-run average in his first full season with the Boston Red Sox, became the first starting pitcher in 15 years to win the American League’s Most Valuable Player award Tuesday.

The 24-year-old right-hander received 19 of 28 first-place votes for 339 points in easily outdistancing Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees and Boston teammate Jim Rice in the balloting by the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

“I thought I did have a pretty good chance even though I was a starting pitcher,” Clemens said at his home in Katy, Tex. He conceded, though, that the news still was a bit of a shock.

“I was going to come home tonight and see on TV if I finished second or third, but Debbie (his wife) wanted me to stay around the house.”

He learned of the award by telephone, and immediately called his wife, who was at an obstetrician’s office. She is expecting the couple’s first child in five days.

“I hope by winning this award I have put an exclamation mark in the minds of voters about starting pitchers winning it. If I was voting, I’d vote for my teammate Jim Rice. But I felt one of us should win it.”

Mattingly, in a telephone news conference from Yankee Stadium after the announcement, said he believes strongly that an everyday player should win the MVP award.

“I know he is valuable,” Mattingly said of Clemens, who also won the Cy Young Award as the league’s top pitcher. “But it’s hard for me to conceive that a guy who is in 33 or 34 games can be as valuable . . . as an everyday guy who is out there 162 games.”

The Yankee first baseman played in all 162 games in 1986, missing only six innings all season as New York finished second to the American League champion Red Sox in the AL East. Matttingly hit .352 with 31 home runs and 113 runs batted in.

“A guy like (Clemens) does a great job every fifth day, but the other four days you’re counting on somebody else,” said Mattingly, the league’s MVP in 1985.