So what? So what if Roger Clemens wasn't the dominant pitcher he's been all season when he beat the White Sox Wednesday night in Chicago for his 20th win, the one that made him the first pitcher EVER to go 20-1? So what if he had only one strikeout in 6 1/3 innings, so what if Joe Torre pulled him with a man on and a 4-3 lead in the seventh, to make sure he didn't get the loss and could still get the win?

In a way, this victory was what the Yankees and New York City are all about -- everybody pitching in to preserve excellence. If the Rocket's 20th win were an Oscar, he would have had to thank Derek Jeter for his two home runs, his infield for so many nifty plays, Jay Witasick for getting Royce Clayton to hit into the seventh-inning-ending double play, Mariano Rivera for picking up his 46th save (tying Dave Righetti's team record), Chuck Knoblauch for driving in two insurance runs in the ninth, even the second base umpire for calling Ray Durham out -- he looked safe -- on a steal of second base in the eighth.

Jeter, of course, was the biggest hero, though the very word hero has taken on a different meaning in the last week. It was nice that his second homer, a two-run shot off Gary Glover, came on a 3-0 pitch: No other city has as many green lights as New York.

If this wasn't Clemens' best performance, he had the excuse of a two-week layoff. Clearly, the down time affected his control, but he got the outs when he had to.

"You're supposed to work hard to win your 20th," Clemens said. "You don't expect it to be easy. It's been an unbelievable week with everything that's happened." Before the unbelievable week, the Rocket was having an unbelievable season. At .952, he now has a chance to hold the highest winning percentage for any 20-game winner in history, topping the 25-3, .893 set by Ron Guidry in 1978. Clemens is now the only pitcher to ever have two separate streaks of 16 or more wins. And with last night's victory, he became the oldest A.L. pitcher to win 20 since Early Wynn in 1959.

The celebration for Clemens' 20th was appropriately subdued. After the game, he said, "It felt great to go back to work and challenge the hitters, but right now it doesn't have the same feeling it would have weeks ago. Everything is a little different now."

Perhaps the best thing about the game was that for the first time in eight days, a sporting event didn't make us say, So what?

Steve Wulf is executive editor of ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at steve.wulf@espnmag.com.