Roger Clemens

Clemens was born in Dayton, Ohio, the youngest of Bill and Bess Clemens's five children. Clemens never knew his father. When he was eight weeks old, Clemens's mother left his father, a truck driver. This lack of a father figure would always haunt Clemens. Two years later, his mother married Woody Booher, a tool-and-die maker fifteen years her senior, only to have him die five years later of a heart attack. "I'm sure [his death] was hard on Roger, because Woody was the only father he ever knew," Bess Booher told Sports Illustrated. "But if he had any problems, he never showed it. When you have adversities in your life, you have to strive to overcome them."