So I guess we can table all those Roger Clemens fantasies, right?

You know the ones.

How Rocket Roger was going to come back the Red Sox, back to his roots, the perfect way to bring his career full circle. How he was going to come back to pitch in Fenway Park, the symbolic farewell to his Hall-of-Fame career, Rocket Roger pitching the Red Sox to another World Series title, Roger Clemens coming back to the Red Sox, be still my beating heart.

Well, maybe next time.

Now he is back with the Yankees, riding in on the proverbial white horse to salvage a pitching staff that’s in ruins in the Bronx. Sunday he was unveiled in the seventh inning, while sitting in George Steinbrenner’s private box, addressing the Yankee Stadium crowd as if he were giving a Sermon on the Mount.

It would all be such great theater if it wasn’t such a sham.

Because this is a mini-capsule of everything that’s wrong with professional sports, all wrapped up in one nice little package.

Overstated?

Sure.

But you get the point.

Let’s start with the money, what amounts to a $28-million contract, pro-rated as it may be. It probably will add up to over a million a start, but who is counting? Suffice it to say that it will keep Clemens in the game even though he will be 45 in August and supposedly left the Yankees in 2003 to retire.

Then again, Roger’s world always has been as flexible as his pitching repertoire, harkening back to those last years in Boston when he said he wanted to leave the Sox to be closer to his Texas home and ended up in Toronto. So much for geography.

He long ago became the poster child for baseball mercenaries, this arm for hire, long ago turning it into an art form. Which is why this latest scenario was perfect Roger: get three teams to be interested, three teams to bid, three teams to drive the price up, three teams that have spent the past few months waiting for Roger to make up his mind, Hamlet in spikes. Then showing up in New York on Sunday and saying that he couldn’t forget the words, “my owner, Mr. Steinbrenner,” said to him in spring training how he needs him to come back., as though the past few months were simply some elaborate show: will he retire, won’t he retire. A nation waits.

Please.

But it’s not the money that’s outrageous here, not in a sport where the Red Sox paid $50 million simply for the rights to negotiate with Dice-K. No, it’s all been Monopoly money for a long time now, just one of the reasons why it almost takes a second mortgage to bring a family of four to a Sox game these days. It’s the fact that the Yankees are so willing to acquiesce to Clemens’ demands, namely that he will join them when he’s good and ready, and he will not have to go on road trips if he’s not scheduled to pitch.

So much for team harmony.

That’s what smells here.

The Yankees love to portray themselves as the classiest of all baseball franchises. No facial hair. No dishonoring the great tradition. The Yankee way or the highway. That’s the party line, anyway, and it’s a long way from the Bronx Zoo of old. And now they are going to let Clemens come and go as he wants, as if the Yankees are just another desperate organization who needs him more than he needs them?

Say it ain’t so, Joe D.

We like to think that a team is a family, or at last a group that plays by the same rules. And if we all know that in this day and age it’s often more complicated than that, all players understand that if you are on a team you are part of something that is larger than yourself. Little League. High school. College. The pros. We like to think that some things are sacrosanct, the inner truths about teams that all players adhere to.

Not Clemens.

Not in this situation anyway. Nor what he did in Houston last year, either.

Instead, he is treating Major League baseball as if it’s the PGA Tour, picking his spots, as though he’s an individual contractor, his allegiance to himself and his contract. That’s the perception, anyway, and all the words about how happy he is to be coming back to the Yankees don’t change it.

It also sets a horrible precedent, not that we should expect Clemens to care a lot about that.

For you know it’s just a matter of time before some other aging star follows the same script. Why go to spring training and then spend the first couple of months in the cold weather when you can simply show up in June? Why go on all those road trips if you don’t really have to?

In short, why not make your own deal?

And the rest of the team?

Hey, it’s every man for himself, right?

That’s the danger here, and it’s a sneak preview of a potential minefield. Why go through an arduous long season if you have both the clout and the cachet to avoid it?

What happens to how fans view players if it becomes all too apparent that the players run things? Manny Ramirez shows up two days late to spring training and it’s like the sky is going to fall. Imagine if there were several high-priced stars that floated through the season on their own timetable?

And maybe all this is simply blowing into the wind.

If there truly is a baseball god, Rocket Roger will come to the Yankees and be less than what they signed up for. He is going to be 45, after all, and back in the American League no less, and one of these summers this scenario of his simply isn’t going to work anymore.

Let’s hope it’s this one.

For a lot of reasons.

breynold@projo.com