This entry was posted on 1/8/2008 9:54 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
Perhaps the most famous and well-connected sports reporter to ever cover the varied terrain of pro sports in Boston, Will McDonough had a special nickname for Roger Clemens during his time as a Red Sox: the Texas Con Man.
Well, once again, McDonough has jammed the hammer down squarely on the head – even if it was a posthumous swing.
The Rocket Man is undoubtedly the greatest Major League pitcher of my generation and should be a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but the winner of 354 games and seven Cy Young Awards didn’t exactly cover himself in glory during a circus sideshow of a press conference on Monday afternoon.
The suspicion of performance enhancing drugs usage has caused Clemens and his team of handlers and hangers-on to progress through first written statements by lawyers; to a one-sided video released by Clemens on Youtube; to an interview with avid Yankees van Mike Wallace on 60 minutes; and then finally to yesterday’s press conference with the assorted media hordes in Houston.
Clemens unveiled a 17 minute phone conversation with former trainer and current whistleblower Brian McNamee that he and his staff of “advisors” recorded, with the obvious intent to clear the hurler’s name.
Instead the conversation comes off as a pair of deceitful snakes circling each other yet afraid to ever mention the 600 pound steroid gorilla in the room, with McNamee asking Clemens 21 different variations of the question “What do you want me to do?” and the pitcher limply replying that he wants the truth.
Well, Roger, this isn’t A Few Good Men and you’re a lot more of Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessep than Tom Cruise’s Daniel Kaffee.
Clemens managed to stick to his convenient Vitamin B-12 and Litocaine excuses for much of the ensuing Q and A with reporters during yesterday’s press conference, but the Texas Con Man finally began to display his true colors just before he cut things off and stalked off the stage.
Minutes after his attorney, Rusty Hardin, handed him a note that requested he “lighten up”, Clemens spit nails at the notion that the specter of performance enhancing drugs could hurt his chance to one day be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
“Do you think I played my career because I'm worried about the damn Hall of Fame?” said Clemens to a room filled with many potential voters. “You keep your vote. I don't need the Hall of Fame to justify that I put my butt on the line and I worked my tail off, and I defy anybody to say I did it by cheating or taking any shortcuts, OK?”
About the only thing Clemens might have accomplished yesterday was alienating the remaining people that were going to vote for him despite the mounting evidence against him.
Do we know how many of the 4,672 hitters that Clemens whiffed in his career were on the juice?
Is it safe to assume that during Clemens’ heyday the majority of Major League Baseball were utilizing some sort of performance enhancing drugs, and that the big lug was one of hundreds if not thousands of “enhanced” ballplayers starring in the big leagues?
Will we ever really know the answer to all the who’s, when’s, where’s and how’s of steroids and HGH?
As a member of the Boston Chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I may someday have a Hall of Fame vote and I have a sneaking suspicion that Clemens will still be vying for induction when my would finally count.
I was ready to someday throw my support toward Clemens given his still-awesome accomplishments in what will someday be known simply as the “Steroid Era” of baseball, as the accusations and suspicions can’t completely tarnish arguably the greatest pitcher of all time in an age when nearly every player was guilty until proven innocent.
That all changed yesterday afternoon, however, when a deluded, paranoid, and defiant Major League great took the podium and lamely attempted the Texas con job on millions of people just as he’ll likely do when he testifies under oath before Congress next week.
Instead of taking the quasi-noble Andy Pettitte route and admitting your guilt and taking your penance like a man who knows he’s wrong but wants to make it right, Clemens seemed like a man intent on bullying and buying his way to innocence and a clean record.
The con didn’t work on me this time, Roger, and somewhere Will McDonough is smiling and saying “I told you so.”
