He said thought it was a ball. You know, because your first impulse upon fielding a ground ball is to hurl it at the baserunner. What a dick.And so the bizzaro Roger Clemens Steroids Denial Roadshow grinds on. First, there was the super-uncomfortable, semi-hilarious YouTube-ready video where he denied using steroids. Then, as promised in said video, there was the 60 Minutes interview where a way-over-the-top indignant Clemens tried to cloak his denials in soft-tosser Mike Wallace's credibility (highlight: octogenarian Wallace having to say "buttocks"). Monday was undoubtedly the piece de la resistance, as Clemens and his attorney Rusty Hardin held a press conference after filing a defamation suit in Texas against Clemens' accuser, longtime trainer Brian McNamee. It was McNamee who named Clemens in the Mitchell Report, the product of baseball's internal investigation into the so-called Steroid Era. During the press conference, Clemens played a 17-minute long recording of a recent telephone conversation that he had with McNamee, wherein the 300 game winner insisted that "I just want the truth out there" with McNamee plaintively asking, 21 times, "What do you want me to do?" in response.
Now, you might think that if somebody had seen fit to tarnish your life's achievements and forever sully your name with an outrageous string of fabrications, you might, given the opportunity to speak to them, go mega fucking apeshit on their ass. Yet according to an AP news account, "No matter whether McNamee's tone was angry or pleading, whether he was talking about his ailing 10-year-old son or offering to go to jail, Clemens never fired back with anger or accusations that McNamee was lying." So, to get this straight, Clemens, holding a press conference to emphasize his strong denial of NcNamee's accusations, played a 17-minute long tape during which he not once calls NcNamee a liar. And the presence of Clemens' lawyer, a high-powered Houston attorney, at his side suggests that Roger paid someone to tell him to do this.
Evidently displeased that his smoking gun turned out to be something of a damp squib, Clemens' was exceedingly terse throughout the 15 minute Q&A period; attorney Hardin actually at one point passed him a note saying "lighten up." Finally, Roger, conflating his time in Major League Baseball with government work, abruptly ended the event amidst answering questions regarding his Hall of Fame prospects, saying, "I cannot wait to go into the private sector and hopefully never have to answer it again."
Hardin attempted to put the best face on Clemens' flame out, saying "Look at it this way: Roger Clemens is either the world's greatest actor or he didn't do (what McNamee accuses). And if he didn't do that, then he's been screwed big-time by everybody who believes he did it. Why wouldn't he be upset about it? If you didn't do it, there's not a single person who wouldn't be going crazy." Personally, I don't think that Clemens' Bush-esque "I'm a straight shooter" routine would have required him to be "the world's greatest actor," but that's just me.
Furthermore, according to the AP, he tried to put a pro-Rocket spin on the phone recording:
To be fair to Roger, he's fucked eight ways to Sunday on this one. If he maintained his silence, he would have been lambasted for not taking the opportunity to try and clear his name. Having opened his mouth, he has to deal with the fact that nobody believes what he has to say, especially given the fact that McNamee was right about Pettitte. Furthermore, short of McNamee coming out and retracting his story, there's no way that Clemens can possibly prove that he didn't take steroids anymore than Saddam could have proved Iraq didn't have WMDs. The damage to his reputation is practically irreversible.
Yet...we really don't have any incentive to buy Clemens story, do we? After all, he fits the Barry Bonds profile: not only did Roger have a solid end to his career, he had a spectacular end to it. He was putting up sick numbers all the while McNamee alleges he was abusing steroids, from Toronto, to New York, to Houston, picking up Cy Young Awards four through seven along the way. In fact, Clemens was such a hot commodity as a power pitcher at age 44 that the Yankees brought him back for a staggering $28 million pro-rated deal, even allowing him the oft-mocked "Roger rules" whereby he would not have to travel with the team on road trips during which he was not scheduled to pitch - a perk sure to ruffle feathers in any clubhouse but previously inconceivable in Yankeeland. Furthermore, Clemens engaged in erratic behavior, throwing at opposing batters with regularity, even tossing a shard of broken bat at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series.
Yes, all of this evidence is circumstantial; you could not meet the burden of proof require to obtain a conviction in a criminal court. Of course, Clemens isn't in court, and, provided that he doesn't get caught in a lie by federal prosecutors as Bonds allegedly did, it's unlikely that he will face legal jeopardy even if he did use steroids. But we're not really talking about putting Clemens in jail. What we're talking about is whether or not he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with the game's great pitchers - Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn et al., and more to the point, whether or not he deserves enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. Certainly his numbers demand induction - 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts, and 7 Cy Youngs will do that for you. Thus the argument is centered around whether or not indications that Clemens cheated carry enough weight to make evitable the inevitability of his entry into Cooperstown.
The way I see it, being selected for inclusion in the Hall of Fame is an award, not a right. The baseball writers who have a vote must simply weigh in their minds whether or not they feel that the evidence surrounding Clemens is compelling enough for them to determine that he cheated. Some will, some won't; fine. What troubles me (though troubles may be to strong a word) is the mindset that perhaps the Clemenses and the Bondses of the world should be inducted even if we do think they cheated. This moral relativism cloaks a desire to slither out of making a difficult call, which, after all, the baseball writers are there to make Some commentators, like Bob Costas, have suggested that rather than exclude statistical worthies such Bonds, Clemens, and ye old test case Pete Rose, we ought to place a footnote on their plaques outlining the less than sterling aspects of their career - a kind of compromise that shames the player for his misdeeds while taking the heat off of the writers for shutting him out in the absence of, I don't know, a signed confession. This approach is certainly better than letting the writers - who feel no compunction about freezing statistical worthy Jim Rice out of the Hall because he wasn't nice to them during his playing days - wriggle out of having to apply any actual scrutiny or discretion to an era when, let's face it, they turned as much of a blind eye as anyone towards the chemistry experiment that unfolded right in front of them. Yet, come on: you're basically saying "Though we know they cheated to gain an unfair competitive advantage, we feel that their tainted achievements were so great that we have no choice but to include them in the Hall of Fame."
So yeah, Clemens presents a conundrum, even as he prepares for life "in the private sector." The road show will continue, with Clemens slated to appear before Congress to testify about steroids in baseball, or rather to articulate his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, him never having used steroids. Really, there's no telling how long all of this can go on for, though doubtlessly even as this first wave of furor subsides, the echoes will awaken as Roger approaches that magic date five years hence when he will appear on his first Hall of Fame ballot. I suspect that, in the absence of harder evidence than Brian McNamee's say-so, and with the passage of time, the writers will feel compelled to put Clemens in the Hall. And perhaps they would be right to do so; after all, mere suspicion is not going to be sufficient enough for the serious-minded to dismiss a career larded with outsized achievement. Yet nothing will ever totally expel the feeling that the Rocket got a leg up on everyone else by doing it the wrong way, and the more "genuine" he tries to appear in venting his frustration, the more his protestations seem contrived. After all, Clemens has one thing going against him that all the exculpatory evidence in the world can't change: he's a total dickhead.
Now, you might think that if somebody had seen fit to tarnish your life's achievements and forever sully your name with an outrageous string of fabrications, you might, given the opportunity to speak to them, go mega fucking apeshit on their ass. Yet according to an AP news account, "No matter whether McNamee's tone was angry or pleading, whether he was talking about his ailing 10-year-old son or offering to go to jail, Clemens never fired back with anger or accusations that McNamee was lying." So, to get this straight, Clemens, holding a press conference to emphasize his strong denial of NcNamee's accusations, played a 17-minute long tape during which he not once calls NcNamee a liar. And the presence of Clemens' lawyer, a high-powered Houston attorney, at his side suggests that Roger paid someone to tell him to do this.
Evidently displeased that his smoking gun turned out to be something of a damp squib, Clemens' was exceedingly terse throughout the 15 minute Q&A period; attorney Hardin actually at one point passed him a note saying "lighten up." Finally, Roger, conflating his time in Major League Baseball with government work, abruptly ended the event amidst answering questions regarding his Hall of Fame prospects, saying, "I cannot wait to go into the private sector and hopefully never have to answer it again."
Hardin attempted to put the best face on Clemens' flame out, saying "Look at it this way: Roger Clemens is either the world's greatest actor or he didn't do (what McNamee accuses). And if he didn't do that, then he's been screwed big-time by everybody who believes he did it. Why wouldn't he be upset about it? If you didn't do it, there's not a single person who wouldn't be going crazy." Personally, I don't think that Clemens' Bush-esque "I'm a straight shooter" routine would have required him to be "the world's greatest actor," but that's just me.
Furthermore, according to the AP, he tried to put a pro-Rocket spin on the phone recording:
McNamee sounded distraught during the conversation.
"I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too," he said.
His voice cracked when he said: "My wife is gone. My kids are gone."
"I don't have any money. I have nothing," McNamee said. "I'm not doing a book deal. I got offered seven figures to go on TV. I didn't do it. I didn't take it. I didn't do anything. All I did was what I thought was right -- I never thought it was right, but I thought that I had no other choice, put it that way."
Hardin said McNamee's attempts for guidance from Clemens seemed odd.
"We played it back, trying to decide, 'What do we do now? What is he saying?"' he said. "There is a 90-percent view of the people around Roger that (McNamee) was trying to set Roger up. Roger thought that maybe McNamee was really trying to say, 'I'm ready to come clean.'
Now, finally, this is some first class lawyering. Note that McNamee sounds like any grade A rat crawling back to his irate mob pals - obviously he didn't want to put Roger in, but the feds had him over a barrel, so he named names. Also, it certainly doesn't help Camp Clemens that former Yankee and Astro teammate Andy Pettitte, whom McNamee also dimed out in the Mitchell Report, decided honesty was the best policy and copped to using Human Growth Hormone to come back from an injury (whatever). Even more damaging is Clemens' admission that he let McNamee inject him with something - allegedly B12 and lidocaine, a painkiller - thus opening the door to one of those feeble Bonds-esque "I thought it was flax seed oil" defenses. Yet Hardin tries to contort McNamee's words into a near admission of guilt, taking his weasely attempts to duck responsibility for naming Clemens and attempting to bend them into some unspoken mea culpa. (Also note the "There is a 90-percent view of the people around Roger that (McNamee) was trying to set Roger up" part. One, this means that there is a 10-percent "view of the people around Roger" - grammar people! - that McNamee is not trying to set him up. So, Rocket, for future reference, watch your back. Two, one wonders how much objectivity that other 90% bring to the table. I mean, are his wife and kids counted in that number? This whole "people around Roger" business makes it seem like he either lives in a bubble of yes-men or he's in junior high. Anyway.)
To be fair to Roger, he's fucked eight ways to Sunday on this one. If he maintained his silence, he would have been lambasted for not taking the opportunity to try and clear his name. Having opened his mouth, he has to deal with the fact that nobody believes what he has to say, especially given the fact that McNamee was right about Pettitte. Furthermore, short of McNamee coming out and retracting his story, there's no way that Clemens can possibly prove that he didn't take steroids anymore than Saddam could have proved Iraq didn't have WMDs. The damage to his reputation is practically irreversible.
Yet...we really don't have any incentive to buy Clemens story, do we? After all, he fits the Barry Bonds profile: not only did Roger have a solid end to his career, he had a spectacular end to it. He was putting up sick numbers all the while McNamee alleges he was abusing steroids, from Toronto, to New York, to Houston, picking up Cy Young Awards four through seven along the way. In fact, Clemens was such a hot commodity as a power pitcher at age 44 that the Yankees brought him back for a staggering $28 million pro-rated deal, even allowing him the oft-mocked "Roger rules" whereby he would not have to travel with the team on road trips during which he was not scheduled to pitch - a perk sure to ruffle feathers in any clubhouse but previously inconceivable in Yankeeland. Furthermore, Clemens engaged in erratic behavior, throwing at opposing batters with regularity, even tossing a shard of broken bat at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series.
Yes, all of this evidence is circumstantial; you could not meet the burden of proof require to obtain a conviction in a criminal court. Of course, Clemens isn't in court, and, provided that he doesn't get caught in a lie by federal prosecutors as Bonds allegedly did, it's unlikely that he will face legal jeopardy even if he did use steroids. But we're not really talking about putting Clemens in jail. What we're talking about is whether or not he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with the game's great pitchers - Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn et al., and more to the point, whether or not he deserves enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. Certainly his numbers demand induction - 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts, and 7 Cy Youngs will do that for you. Thus the argument is centered around whether or not indications that Clemens cheated carry enough weight to make evitable the inevitability of his entry into Cooperstown.
The way I see it, being selected for inclusion in the Hall of Fame is an award, not a right. The baseball writers who have a vote must simply weigh in their minds whether or not they feel that the evidence surrounding Clemens is compelling enough for them to determine that he cheated. Some will, some won't; fine. What troubles me (though troubles may be to strong a word) is the mindset that perhaps the Clemenses and the Bondses of the world should be inducted even if we do think they cheated. This moral relativism cloaks a desire to slither out of making a difficult call, which, after all, the baseball writers are there to make Some commentators, like Bob Costas, have suggested that rather than exclude statistical worthies such Bonds, Clemens, and ye old test case Pete Rose, we ought to place a footnote on their plaques outlining the less than sterling aspects of their career - a kind of compromise that shames the player for his misdeeds while taking the heat off of the writers for shutting him out in the absence of, I don't know, a signed confession. This approach is certainly better than letting the writers - who feel no compunction about freezing statistical worthy Jim Rice out of the Hall because he wasn't nice to them during his playing days - wriggle out of having to apply any actual scrutiny or discretion to an era when, let's face it, they turned as much of a blind eye as anyone towards the chemistry experiment that unfolded right in front of them. Yet, come on: you're basically saying "Though we know they cheated to gain an unfair competitive advantage, we feel that their tainted achievements were so great that we have no choice but to include them in the Hall of Fame."
So yeah, Clemens presents a conundrum, even as he prepares for life "in the private sector." The road show will continue, with Clemens slated to appear before Congress to testify about steroids in baseball, or rather to articulate his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, him never having used steroids. Really, there's no telling how long all of this can go on for, though doubtlessly even as this first wave of furor subsides, the echoes will awaken as Roger approaches that magic date five years hence when he will appear on his first Hall of Fame ballot. I suspect that, in the absence of harder evidence than Brian McNamee's say-so, and with the passage of time, the writers will feel compelled to put Clemens in the Hall. And perhaps they would be right to do so; after all, mere suspicion is not going to be sufficient enough for the serious-minded to dismiss a career larded with outsized achievement. Yet nothing will ever totally expel the feeling that the Rocket got a leg up on everyone else by doing it the wrong way, and the more "genuine" he tries to appear in venting his frustration, the more his protestations seem contrived. After all, Clemens has one thing going against him that all the exculpatory evidence in the world can't change: he's a total dickhead.
