300 Yankees' Roger Clemens Closing in on Historic Milestone.(New York Yankees)

WHEN ROGER CLEMENS HEADED to Winter Haven, Florida, for his first professional spring training in 1983, his mother handed him a note. It wasn't a motherly to-do list about acting like a professional. She didn't tell him to eat his Wheaties.

It was a list of poems.

She waxed poetically about the tradition of the Boston Red Sox and of baseball history in the East, where, God and fastball willing, she thought, he would be a part of someday. Sixteen years later, mother and son walked into an Atlanta ballroom and a party for the all-century team. She didn't need introductions. She grabbed her son and pointed out Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, all the way down the lineup. Oh, yes, she recognized one more member of the all century team.

Her son.

"She had a sense of history," Clemens said. "Just playing baseball in the East and with teams rich in history, you find out real quick."

As Clemens enters his 19th pro season, that history is enveloping him anew. He's approaching the exclusive 300-win club, common knowledge to most, but not even his own mother might know this tidbit: He might become the last pitcher to do it for a very long time Greg Maddux, 20 wins behind Clemens at 240 (at the start of the 2001 season) and four years younger at 34, is the only other active pitcher with a realistic shot.

To Clemens, that's all he has: a shot.