Rocket Man

Roger Clemens Appears At Hearings

At this point in time, it's getting harder to believe Roger Clemens' claim that he never touched PEDs. One of the weirder things to come out of the Clemens camp was that when he *did* mention HGH to Brian McNamee, it was in relation to his wife getting them for the Sports Illustrated photo-shoot.

Well, I guess if you want to look good, you have to work at it. I have to say she looked pretty good in that shoot, considering she has pushed out 4 younger rockets out into the world. Good for her! It's a weird photo, and knowing about the HGH thing makes it even weirder. Anyway, Clemens' point is that he didn't do it, his wife did. And the dog ate his homework.

A Couple of days ago, Jose "juiced" Canseco came out and said that he never discussed steroids or PEDs with Roger Clemens.

The first mention of Clemens' name in the Mitchell Report is on page 167. On the very next page comes McNamee's account of "a lunch party that Canseco hosted at his home in Miami."

"McNamee stated that, during this luncheon, he observed Clemens, Canseco, and another person he did not know meeting inside Canseco's house, although McNamee did not personally attend that meeting," the Mitchell Report says.

In his affidavit, Canseco said, "I specifically recall that Clemens did not come to the bar-b-que. I remember this because I was disappointed that he did not attend. I later learned that he had a golfing commitment that day and could not attend the party."

Canseco's book about steroids in baseball, "Juiced," drew Congress' attention in 2005, leading to that year's hearing. He and Clemens were teammates on the 1996 Boston Red Sox and 2000 New York Yankees, in addition to the '98 Blue Jays.In his affidavit, the existence of which was first reported by the AP on Saturday, Canseco also disputes other statements of McNamee's in the Mitchell Report. The affidavit also says "neither Senator Mitchell nor anyone working with him" contacted Canseco to attempt to corroborate things McNamee said.

It's a weird endorsement, but it is an affidavit. It's a bit like getting a character endorsement from a heroin junky.

The more this Steroid circus goes on, the more I'm inclined to think I'm participating in a hypocrisy contest - the person who can express the most disapproval wins!. There are some sports where they test the hell out of you, and there are other sports that don't. Every time we find a drug cheat, we get up in arms like he's Ben Johnson. The thing about Ben Johnson is that he did run faster than Carl Lewis, even though he surrendered his gold medal to Lewis. And then it came out years afterwards that Lewis may have been on PEDs too - but by then it was too late to take away his gold medal and give it to the next guy. All the while there's no guarantee the next guy didn't do steroids either.

Then there's the historic problem where MLB and the MLBPA were complicit in letting the steroid problem go unchecked for many years. Even if it weren't intentional, they ended up in a situation where they tacitly condoned it. When most other sports were screaming blue about PEDs, baseball sort of went and celebrated the Festival of the Longball with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. It just doesn't look good to then turn around and haggle about whether Roger Clemens was on PEDs or not or whether that is provable in the US Senate when MLB didn't exactly have rules against PEDs, let alone a testing policy. It's not surprising Dick Pound and the World Anti-Doping Agency managed to kick baseball off the Olympic sport list. baseball had it coming.
But is it fair (within its own crappy confines of non-testing and head-in-the-sand administration of PED regulation) to then turn around and hoist up these people?

On top of all this mess there's the record book. We might expunge Ben Johnson's record but the fact remains he ran 100m in 9.79s. To my knowledge, that mark has not been broken. Tim Montgomery ran it in 9.78 with a 2.0m/s tailwind, but he too was found to have used PEDs. I think Bonds' record stands. The balls went over the fence, the result stands. Ditto anything and everything that happened in the 'Steroids Era'. It's crappy, but the discomfort of living with it should be a reminder to us all that PEDs can ruin your sport in more ways than one.