Juicing

Okay it looks like I'm finally going to have to talk about the steroids scandal in my favorite sport. Actually, I'm only going to talk about the steroids issue briefly. But I am going to have my say about the most noted player to be implicated so far: Roger Clemens.

In case you've been pulling a Rip Van Winkle for the past couple of months, Roger the Rocket has been accused of being a juicer. Anecdotal evidence does suggest something suspicious. Roger was a great pitcher, but, as players do, he seemed to slip a little as he aged. Then he amazingly returned to his earlier (if not better) form, won a bunch of Cy Youngs, and became the darling of MLB. On the other hand, Clemens has been ADAMANT in his denials -- more so than you'd think he would be if there were a smoking gun out there -- and the only public evidence so far has been the word of his accuser, his former personal trainer.

Here's an update as of where things stand right now.

The big news in the update is that the former trainer now claims he has a bunch of syringes with traces of banned substances and Clemens' blood on them. One does wonder why someone would keep stuff like that for 7 years, but due to today's CSI culture, that seems like pretty good evidence -- if it's true.

Roger, the former trainer, and other folks are supposed to testify before Congress next week, but yesterday the Rocket and his team of lawyers and a PR guy went office hopping around Congress, just to show what a great guy he really is I guess. Evidently I'm not the only one who wondered just what he was doing "lobbying" on Capitol Hill:

"It's highly unusual, and that's why I think one would try to determine the rationale for it. What is he trying to accomplish?" Davis [D-IL] said in an interview with The Associated Press before Clemens arrived. "I am willing to hear him out and hear what he has to say."

Regardless, that's not what I want to talk about. No I want to talk about Roger's press conference he held at the end of the day. Well I say Roger's press conference, but he said almost nothing. No, it was just a chance for his lawyers to take turns besmirching McNamee (the former trainer). I had the TV on ESPN and I happened to catch a few minutes of the spectacle. It was sickening.

The "good old boy" lawyer from Houston stood there and fulfilled every slimy lawyer cliche in the book. He called McNamee a "not well" person, accused him of being "out to get" Roger, and brought up his connection to a past allegation of date rape. Charges were never filed, but the good old boy said the police sure thought there was a crime. He even painted McNamee as a whining sycophant who begged Clemens for some Springsteen concert tickets one time. The lawyer said something like, I guess if Roger had been able to get those tickets for him we might not even be standing here today. Now "unbiased" stories I've read have made me think McNamee might not win any citizen of the year awards, but this just seemed like overkill.

In fact, the more I watched, the more sympathy I felt FOR MCNAMEE. During it all, Roger just stood in the background, watching. Why, I wondered, would he allow this blatant smear campaign from his own people? Doesn't he realize it's going to create more sympathy for the guy? Then I remembered -- Roger is a bully. And bullies don't think that way. You cross me, I'll run you down. There's no strategy, just the law of the jungle.

I used to be a big Clemens fan, but he has really worn on me the past several years. I'm just fed up with his annual retirement dance. He "retires" but then, come mid-season, he comes out of retirement to "save" the chosen team. This past year's circus at Yankee Stadium was the last straw for me. I know the power of the spotlight has to be a mighty pull, especially for someone with the competitive juices of a pro athlete, but I'm tired of it all. Retire Roger. Go back to Texas with your reputation as one of the all-time greatest pitchers intact.

Now, of course, that is not possible. Roger HAS to fight this charge. I think, though, his defense is about to undergo a subtle change. I could already see signs of it in the press conference yesterday. I predict soon it's going to be that he never KNOWINGLY took anything. If McNamee injected him with banned substances, it was without Clemens' knowledge. I have no proof; it's just a feeling I got from listening to the good old boy lawyer yesterday.

The worst part is, I think it's much ado about (almost) nothing. Yes, the whole thing is a disgrace for MLB. The owners and the players' union should be ashamed that they allowed this to happen. That's the key thing, though; it did happen. For the past several years I believe illegal performance enhancers have run rampant in MLB. I suspect a great many players have used "something unnatural" to help them out. Given that, I don't see any way to downgrade one player's performance during the period. If you were the dominant hitter or pitcher during the steroid era, then you're just as deserving of acclaim as if you'd dominated during the dead ball era, the amphetamine era, or any other baseball era. It does mean you can't compare raw numbers from today's players with those of other eras, but that's true about other times as well. Baseball needs to 'fess up and promise to do better (which they've done), the talking heads need to tsk tsk (which they've done), and Congress needs to butt out (which they won't do).

Finally, all those Hall of Fame voters need to accept the reality of the steroid era (and hope it's on the way out). It will be harder for them to evaluate players, given that the old "automatic" numbers like 500 home runs don't mean so much anymore, but there's a plethora of tools to help them do that. When their times come, vote in Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds on the first ballot. They are Hall of Fame players who dominated the game the way very few ever have. If you truly believed they were the only players using "juice", I could see an argument for keeping them out, but c'mon! We all know that's not true.

So keep working to get the juice out of the game, but baseball has to get past this witch hunt mentality about who used and who didn't. Oh and Roger -- shut up and retire for good!