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Associated PressYANKS 5, CARDS 2: In fourth try at milestone, he also gets his 4,000th strikeout.
NEW YORK - Roger Clemens got his milestones two at a time.
The Rocket finally reached 300 wins Friday night and entered an even more exclusive club, becoming the third pitcher with 4,000 strikeouts as he led the Yankees over the Cardinals 5-2.
Clemens was the 21st pitcher to make it to 300. He did it on his fourth try.
"Four-thousand and 300 puts me with some great names that ever played the game, that ever stepped on that mound," Clemens said.
Clemens allowed two runs in 62/3 innings and struck out 10, raising his total to 4,006 on an unusually cool, damp night. He threw 120 pitches before handing a lead to New York's bullpen for his third straight start.
Handed a 3-2 lead, this time Chris Hammond escaped the seventh-inning jam he created, and Antonio Osuna and Mariano Rivera pitched perfect innings. A sellout crowd of 55,214 cheered while Clemens' teammates hugged him in the dugout after the final out.
Clemens jogged onto the field as Elton John's Rocket Man played over the public address system. He raised both arms, tipped his cap to the fans in rightfield, then leftfield, then touched his heart.
"I really wanted it to happen here. That's why I signed back here," said Clemens, who could have left as a free agent in the winter.
Clemens walked back to near the Yankees dugout and 7-year-old Kody, his youngest son, jumped into his arms as his wife, Debbie, gave Clemens a hug.
His other sons, Koby, Kory and Kacy, took their turns scooping dirt from the mound and putting it in bags as keepsakes, followed by Kody, who went to the mound by himself.
After the game, the sons followed him through the Yankee Stadium corridors, like ducks trailing their parents.
"That's probably every player's dream, to be out there with your son," said the Cardinals' Joe Girardi, Clemens' former catcher on the Yankees.
As fans chanted Clemens' name, Girardi and Tino Martinez, another former Yankee, remained in the St. Louis dugout watching the celebration.
"It's amazing, the hard work, the dedication he put in," Martinez said.
Many family members and friends had followed Clemens from city to city the past three weeks, wanting to be on hand for his history-making night.
But his mother, Bess, who has emphysema and is coming off a bout with pneumonia, was well enough to attend only his first try.
Clemens got teary as he talked about her.
"Mom, I love you," he said.
He called her after the game.
"She sounded great," he said. "Probably pitching every pitch with me."
Clemens, baseball's only six-time Cy Young Award winner, reached the milestones in his 20th and probably final season.
The right-hander (300-155), 40, became the first 300-game winner since Nolan Ryan, another Texas fastballer, in 1990.
Clemens struck out six of his first eight batters. His first six outs came on strikeouts as he relied on his fastball and stayed away from a split-finger pitch that moved so much he called it "violent."
But coming off a 10-day bout with bronchitis, Clemens labored noticeably in the fourth and fifth, stranding three, and twice failed to protect one-run leads.
Before the seventh, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre told Clemens he could face two more batters. Manager Joe Torre was booed loudly when he walked to the mound to remove Clemens with two outs and No. 2 hitter J.D. Drew coming up.
Clemens got a standing ovation as he walked to the dugout on the first-base side, twice tipping his cap.
"I told Roger after the game, "I used to be popular here,"' said Torre, who has led the Yankees to four World Series titles.
"I would have booed, too, if I had been sitting in the stands. They wanted Roger to pitch the complete game, but that wasn't going to happen where his pitch count was."
The booing intensified when Drew bunted for a single on Hammonds' first pitch and Albert Pujols singled him to second. Hammond escaped the jam when Jim Edmonds grounded out.