Roger Clemens thought he was in San Antonio to introduce the president. He walked off the stage with the nation’s highest civilian honour.

Trump made the announcement at the Freeman Coliseum on Wednesday night, at a Republican rally for Texas Attorney General and Senate candidate Ken Paxton. The 24-year major-league veteran stood a few feet away as the president called him “one of the greatest athletes, and maybe the greatest pitcher, of all time,” according to Sportsnaut.

Trump framed the moment as a swipe at the Baseball Hall of Fame rather than a straight tribute.

“He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, but this is a big step up from the Hall of Fame,” he told the crowd.

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“We’re giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And, along with the Congressional Medal of Honor, it’s the highest award bestowed upon anyone.”

‘Twenty-four years, this supersedes anything’

Clemens, visibly caught off guard, took the microphone back.

“Well, I’m stunned, No. 1,” he said, per Fox News.

“Again, 24 years y’all, this supersedes obviously anything I’ve done in my playing career.”

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“To get it from this man, this president. There wouldn’t be another president I’d want to get it from.”

He also pushed back, gently, on one line in Trump’s run through his career numbers.

“I don’t think I lead Major League Baseball in hit batters, Mr. President,” Clemens said, according to the Boston Globe. His 159 career hit batters rank 15th on the all-time list.

A résumé Cooperstown has looked past

Clemens’ statistical case has never really been in doubt:

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• 7 Cy Young Awards, more than any other pitcher
• 4,672 strikeouts, third in major league history
• 2 World Series titles, 11 All-Star selections and the 1986 American League MVP

What has kept him out is the 2007 Mitchell Report, in which his former trainer Brian McNamee alleged he had injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone between 1998 and 2001. Clemens denied the allegations under oath to Congress and was acquitted on all perjury charges in 2012.

In his 10th and final year on the baseball writers’ ballot in 2022, Clemens peaked at 65.2 percent, short of the 75 percent needed for induction, per Yahoo Sports. He has since appeared twice on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot and been rejected both times, most recently on 7 December 2025, when he received fewer than five votes while Jeff Kent was elected.

Under the committee’s rules, that result keeps Clemens off the next Era Committee ballot in 2028 and holds him out of Cooperstown until 2031 at the earliest. If he fails to clear five votes that year, he is permanently out.

‘They have no information’

Trump dismissed the voters’ reasoning directly from the stage.

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“People talk drugs, he never admitted to anything,” he said. “They have no information, they didn’t find anything.”

The Medal of Freedom carries no weight with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America or the Hall’s era committees, both of which operate independently of the federal government. The White House has not set a date for the formal presentation ceremony.

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