BUTLER TWP — Matt Clement has not pitched in a regular season major league game in 12 years.

Yet his big league baseball career has not been forgotten.

The Butler High School athletic office routinely receives letters from all over the country requesting Clement's signature on one — or multiple — baseball cards. The Butler graduate is in his ninth year as Golden Tornado boys basketball coach.

He was 87-86 with a 4.47 earned run average over nine major league seasons.

The letters contain self-addressed stamped envelopes for Clement to return the freshly-signed cards.

“We get at least one or two letters like that a week, sometimes more,” Butler athletic director Bill Mylan said. “My daughter Sydney goes through them and sorts them out for Matt. He kiddingly calls her his secretary.”

Clement said letters have come from as far away as Japan.

“Baseball card collecting is still a pretty popular hobby and people are looking to complete sets with autographs,” Clement said. “I collected cards when I was a kid and now I do it with my son.”

Last Friday night at North Hills High School, Clement was approached by two men from Cleveland prior to Butler's varsity basketball game against the Indians. They were card collectors who found out Clement was coaching at Butler and that he would be at North Hills on this night.

So they made the two-hour drive to get Clement's autograph on his card in person.

“It's not too often we can get a former major leaguer's signature in person,” 29-year-old Phil Kimbril said. “It was well worth driving two hours for that.”

Kimbril and David Kozelka, 19, opened up a book of cards and had Clement sign a few of his.

“It's been a while since I've signed my card in one of those books,” Clement said. “That brought back memories.

“Those guys came all that way ... the least I could do was sign whatever they wanted.”

Kimbril has been collecting autographs on baseball cards for 14 years. He said he has more than 7,000 cards while Kozelka has more than 2,000.

“We met each other at minor league games,” Kozelka said. “Phil goes to (Class A) Lake County Captains games while I go to (Class AA) Akron Rubber Duck games. We get all of the players' autographs as they come through and move up.”

Including minor league and major league cards, Kimbril said there “are probably 300 different Matt Clement cards out there.”

Clement has most of them.

“I've got two boxes at home filled with my cards from through the years,” he said. “They represent great memories and my sons like to look at them.

“After collecting baseball cards for years, I remember getting the first minor league card of myself. It was such a cool experience.”

While in the major leagues, Clement received 50 of his Topps baseball cards every spring. He also had to sign 1,000 cards or so for the company each year.

“And I was just an ordinary player,” Clement said. “Someone like Andrew McCutchen, I can't imagine how many requests he gets to sign cards.

“As an active player, we used to get a box of stuff through the mail to sign almost every day.”

Besides using his cards to share with his kids and go down memory lane, Clement uses some to illustrate fundamental points to young pitchers he works with in Butler these days.

“Some of the pictures of me on those cards show what I'm trying to get across to the kids,” Clement said. “They've proven to be good teaching tools.”

And Clement's name continues to have him break out a writing tool every now and again.

Or even a camera.

“He (Clement) let us get our picture taken with him,” Kimbril said. “He was cool about everything, very friendly and hospitable ... definitely worth the trip.”