GEORGETOWN, Texas – Any time spent with Woody Booher was a wonderful time. Woody had a way of making everybody feel comfortable and safe.

He came into Roger Clemens’ life when Roger was three. Bess Clemens was raising five children on her own in Dayton, Ohio. She had left her husband when Roger was six weeks old.

A few years later Woody, who owned a service station, fell in love with Bess after working on her car. That first day he gave her a ride home on his motorcycle. It wasn’t long before they married. An extraordinary man, Woody embraced his new family, built them a home, took them to church and soon a sixth child, Bonnie, came into the loving family.

Woody was fair and even-tempered. He didn’t even get upset when Brenda, one of Roger’s older sisters, burned down the garage one cold day. She had decided to light a fire to keep the horses warm.

When young Roger would pout, Woody had a way of singing that would wipe away the blues. Woody, though, had a bad heart and on this night at dinner, he felt sick, left the table and collapsed in the bathroom.

Roger, who was eight, sister Janet, who was three, and the youngest, Bonnie, 5, were shooed into the basement as an ambulance was called. Roger and Janet piled a stack of books on the back of a sofa so they could peer out a small window as Woody was rushed to the hospital. Roger never saw him again. Woody died three days later.

“That was the night,” Clemens told me recently, “when my grandma said I became a man.”

That man will go for his 300th victory today against the Red Sox at the Stadium. His family has been with him every step of his amazing journey.

“God doesn’t do things without knowing his great plan,” Bonnie, 36, said last week as she sat in the living room of Janet’s lovely white stone ranch house, alongside Brenda, 49. The three sisters offered a soul-revealing perspective of their Hall of Fame brother.

The five years with Woody helped shaped Roger’s life. “Everything that Roger has, I remember that from Daddy,” Brenda said of Woody, whom the family always refers to as their father. “He was fun loving, firm and fair. He was hard-working man with a great sense of humor and he showed Roger how you should treat your wife, how you should treat your sisters. He formed Roger as a man.”

“God took Roger’s father, knowing that would be a big smacker,” Bonnie said, “but God knows what he’s doing and I really think in a supernatural way, he bolstered Rog and made sure that he was going to get through life OK and somehow kept his focus and bring different mentors into his life.”

Mentors like brother Randy, 52, who followed the oldest brother Richard, 54, to Texas. Randy recognized Texas as a place where the young Rocket could blossom playing high school baseball. So Roger moved outside Houston to live with Randy and his wife, who were schoolteachers.

A few years later Bess, who is now 72 and fighting emphysema, and the sisters followed. Roger would eventually enroll at the University of Texas.

“Do you know what cap he was wearing the first day he walked in there?” Brenda asked. “A Yankee cap. There was a love of the Yankees and their tradition from way back.”

Roger refers to Janet as his protector. Don’t dare get her started on how Mike Piazza crowds the plate.

“As a child, Roger was very determined, just like he is now,” Janet said. “When he wanted something, he would aggravate you to death. He had the ability to keep the entire house stirred up all the time. And he would poke you, keep poking you. Now he still pokes you, but in a different way.”

“Just as much as an aggravator that he is, he loves surprises,” Brenda said.

Like the year the family went to Roger and Debbie’s house for Easter. “After dinner he lines us all in a little row and takes us out through the great room to the front of the house and hands us all these little Easter eggs that have a nice little check in it for each one of us,” Janet said.

“Then he takes us out through the front door and out parked in his driveway are five brand new Infinity QX4 SUVs. They all have little nametags on them and each one is our favorite color. We all got new cars – for Easter.”

The sisters point out how Roger loves to shop and always takes the time to pick out the perfect gift. One of his Texas buddies he loves to shop with is George Bush, Sr.

There are family trips. When Brenda and her husband renewed their vows, Roger took the gang to Hawaii. “He loves the team thing,” Bonnie said. “Rog grew up on a team, he loves to be on a team with other people achieving a particular goal. He likes to be the organizer, that everybody feels OK.”

Just like Woody.

“Roger has a special power of making everyone feel important in his life,” Janet said. “No matter how many people there are. He has the ability to separate who he is from his job and he does it so well. He’s always been that way. He is the whole package.”

After Woody passed away, times were tough again, but the family endured and Roger was in the center of the action.

“He’s such a great storyteller he could be a standup comedian,” Janet said. Added Bonnie, “We didn’t know we didn’t have anything because we had love.”

Love was enough.

“We took care of each other,” Brenda said. “At some point in time everybody made a sacrifice. During baseball season there may have been sacrifices on everybody’s part so Roger gets a glove. If there was something Janet needed, then Roger and everybody else sacrificed. That’s basically how it went.

“When you grow up in a sacrificial situation like that, everybody finds their niche,” Brenda said. “Roger’s niche is that he’s pretty much of a nurturer, people that don’t know him, don’t understand that.”

During his time in Boston, Clemens backed away from the media because he felt some of his words were being turned around.

With the Yankees he has opened up a bit and the real Roger, his sisters insist, is the one Yankee fans saw celebrating wildly in the dugout after winning the World Series in 1999.

They all know that no one in baseball has a better game face. “We were driving in the car one day,” Janet recalled, “and Roger said, ‘That’s why I don’t make friends with guys on the other team because I don’t want him having the edge on me. If they don’t know me, then I’ve got the edge.’ “

During the early years in Boston Janet would call the station where the Red Sox games were broadcast so the family could be put on hold for two or three hours to listen to the broadcast.

The phone bills went through the roof, but so did the family pride. The girls remember their mother Bess saying with a smile, “I hatched that egg.”

“I remember the first time he pitched against Reggie Jackson and he struck him out three times and I got to hear it live,” Janet said. “I was just screaming.”

“Through the years,” Brenda noted, “We’ve all been stymied over Roger’s career on why people have perceived him as selfish because he is not like that.”

“God gave Roger a gift,” Janet added. “We have always prayed to the Lord to keep Roger healthy. We never pray for wins or championships or anything else. We just pray for God to stand with him on the mound and keep him safe.”

The prayer will be the same today when the family gathers for win No. 300. Woody would be proud.

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SISTER SAYS

“Do you know what cap he was wearing the first day he walked in there. A Yankee cap. There was a love of the Yankees and their tradition from way back.” – Clemens’ sister; Brenda, on Roger’s first day at University of Texas.

Elwood E Booher