Saturday was a night to relive a classic Boston Red Sox performance. NESN aired the historic 20-strikeout game by Roger Clemens in 1996, which matched the major league record for strikeouts in a game that he set a decade earlier.
While the staggering strikeout total was the same, the circumstances couldn’t have been more different the second time. Clemens was a rising star in 1986 when he set the single-game strikeout record. He would go on to win the Cy Young and MVP awards that season while leading the Red Sox to the American League pennant.