Roger Clemens: His Last Strike Out?

There's a new guy in the barrel in the major league baseball steroid scandal.    It's Roger Clemens of course for those of you who caught his interview on "60 Minutes" and some of the press conference he had the next day.   It seems that Clemens trainer on the Blue Jays and later the Yankees , Brian McNamee, claims he injected "The Rocket", a 7-Time Cy Young winner and 300 game career wins pitcher, with steroids.  Mr. Clemens, who has pitched really well for a guy well into his forties (he's 45 now) says the shots he got were B-12 shots. 

I have no idea if this guy, who I am not a fan of for reasons other than this latest blitz of publicity, took steroids or not.   What I am is someone who believes in a person owing up to his past and telling the truth about himself.  But I am also a fan of the common law and the concept of innocent until proven guilty.  The sad thing is that most sports fans seem ot have already made up their minds about this.  So many players have been outed for being juiced or written they did it and injected teammates or  over the years slowly turned  into a facsimile of The Incredible Hulk,etc.  It's the error of commission: if one person does it, everybody did it.       

Others have admitted they used human growth hormone,  such as Clemens' teammate Andy Pettite.  Because of all the true confessions or accusations by and against Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, the majority now thinks the worst of Clemens.  He had to be using the stuff because others did and how many guys pitch like he can at 44 years of age?  There's Nolan Ryan and...well, in modern baseball, it's a short list.

   The truth is we just don't know yet many in the media and even some players can't help judging based on what facts there are and what kind of mask the key players in this show put up.   I don't put myself above this rule: its human nature to make decisions and speculate even though we don't have all the facts because sometimes you can't get all the facts or peer pressure gets into it, or you never liked the person people are ragging on in the first place... 

 We know Clemens can be an angry guy.  He famously threw a part of a broken bat back at Mets batter Mike Piazza during  a World Series Game.  He's got himself kicked out of games for dissing the home plate umpire. We know he's upset about the allegations and that he went so far as to play a phone conversation he had with his accuser, Mr. McNamee, at a press conference.  The other guy was not aware he was being taped.    

But does this make him a user of banned substances?  No.

  Lawyer Alan Dershowitz in a Huffington Post blog says that Clemens could and should take the 5th Amendment when he goes before a Congressional Committee next month, if only to avoid a perjury rap--that's because  the law is likely to believe the Senator George Mitchell Report above that of the claims of an angry "old" ballplayer.  It's sad that it has come to this, because if he does take the Fifth he may avoid legal jeopardy  but he can forget about the Hall of Fame or his reputation.

The truth is baseball should have policed itself long ago but Commissioner Bud Selig and others apparently liked the inflated stats of great players  and looked the other way at steroid allegations going back to the late 1980's because it was good for the profit margins of Major League Baseball  to have guys hitting 70 home runs and older star pitchers  still throwing heat, etc., etc.  I wish some of Clemens hardcore detractors would save some of their indignation for those in charge who looked the other way when things started to look fishy for the game Americans once called, without irony,  The National Pastime. .