NEW YORK.  Concerned by the failure of their young pitchers to deliver this spring, New York Yankees' manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Dave Eiland have agreed on a novel therapy--romantic liaisons with teenage country singers of the sort that fueled the Hall of Fame career of hard-throwing right-hander Roger Clemens.

Mindy McCready:  Guaranteed to lower your ERA

"We checked with the Elias Sports Bureau," said Eiland, whose young ace Phil Hughes is 0-4 on the season with a 9.00 earned run average.  "They have confirmed that an affair with a teenage country singer increases a pitcher's ground-ball outs and first-pitch strikes, so we're gonna go with that."

Clemens:  "I know where you live, and I'm comin' after your Shania Twain CD's!"

Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, allegedly began an illicit sexual relationship with country singer Mindy McCready when he was 28 and she was 15.  McCready is a country singer whose biggest hit was "Guys Do It All the Time", which Clemens interpreted as an overture upon hearing it on the clubhouse stereo system after a game against the Texas Rangers in 1996.

McCready:  "Okay, let's get your running in, then some long toss, then a glass of white zinfandel with Mindy."

Clemens had been declared to be in the "twilight of his career" by then-Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette at the end of the season, but he went on to win 162 games with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees and the Houston Astros.  "I may have confused 'twilight' with 'dawn' or maybe 'high noon'," Duquette later explained.

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman