Clemens-McNamee: Just Plain Weird
I’ve been following the Roger Clemens story a little and am really amazed by how this is playing out. It’s just weird.
For those who haven’t been following the story Clemens was named in the Mitchell report as someone who had taken performance enhancing drugs. The source for this information was his former trainer Brian McNamee who claimed to have injected both Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Pettitte fessed up to HGH use while injured a few years ago but Clemens has been denying the allegations vehemently. His first denial came through his lawyer. A second denial came through a video he posted on his website. The third denial came on “60 Minutes”. And the fourth denial came in a press conference Clemens gave yesterday. Somewhere in the middle of these denials Clemens filed a defamation suit against McNamee.
I saw the “60 Minutes” interview and it was weird. But yesterday’s press conference was the weirdest. He played a recording of a telephone conversation he had with McNamee after McNamee reached out to him by email last week. During the conversation neither Clemens nor McNamee admitted they were wrong or said the other one was wrong. The conversation went mostly like this:
McNamee: What do you want me to do?
Clemens: I want the truth to be told.
To me this doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. I’m not even sure why Clemens would want this played at his press conference. I guess he was thinking that McNamee constantly asking “What do you want me to do?” (he said that about 17 times) would show the public that McNamee is either dishonest or willing to say whatever has to be said to cover himself at any given moment.
Both men have agreed to testify in front of Congress next week. This situation is only going to get weirder. Stay tuned.
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Comments
Good point, Nascar. But have you ever heard the saying “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”? You can’t just let previous offenders off the hook. They must be punished for their wrongdoings as long as those wrongdoings were actually against the rules at the time they were committed.
But that is just one prong of what needs to be a two pronged approach. The second prong is tougher rules regarding banned substance use in both the detection and penalty phases. The problem is that MLB, led by Bud Selig who consistently looks like a fool on these matters, don’t seem to do anything about it unless they are pushed.
As for Congress, they are involved for two reasons. The first reason is that there are laws being broken here and seemingly little being done to curtail that trend. The other is that MLB has an anti trust exemption that must be overseen. That exemption was granted by Congress so they are the ones who need to be involved.
I agree that the publicity surrounding the steroids fiasco is probably hurting the game more than the act itself. But MLB is doing it to themselves by dragging it’s feet and having only a mediocre banned substance policy. The way to end this is to stiffen the rules and stiffen the penalties. That would help minimize the problem, quiet all the critics (or most of them anyway) and put the worst of this behind them.
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As a baseball fan I say this with the utmost respect. We all hate they used steroids! did it hurt the game? yes . But whats hurting the game more is all this bad publicity surrounding the game and its stars . Forget the Past and Move foward or forget the future. Can someone please tell me why congress cant let this go don’t they have more important things to worry about ?