Roger Clemens Gets His Official Say in Congressional Hearings

Roger Clemens gets his day in court so to speak and testifies on allegations that Brian McNamee injected him with human growth hormone. The reporting of this incident over the last few months has been, for the most part, balanced. The opinions expressed on the street and in sports blogs have not. With one blog on the Sports Illustrated site reporting on, get this, the political break down, with dems believing McNamee and republicans not trusting his testimony. So considering we are dealing with a sport here why not assess which side is telling the truth with a point system.

With CNN reporting that Rep. Dan Burton is accusing Brian McNamee of telling fibs, one point for Clemens. Considering Roger's taped conversation with McNamee, take a point away. The reason being, for me at least, was the taped conversation looked a little bit like O.J. Simpson's plan of setting up his own sting operation in a hotel room. If you're on the level you don't conduct operations like that yourself. With Clemens testifying to being "misheard" by Andy Pettitte, no points given or taken.

That is neutral testimony, with "misheard" sounding shaky but the presence of Andy Pettitte at Rogers side steadying it a bit. With Roger then saying that Andy "misremembers", well that's another 'mis'. After "misheard" and "misremembers", I think something is amiss, take away one point. With close friend Pettitte using the hormone himself and his wife giving an affidavit confirming what her husband told her about his conversation with Mr. Clemens, minus 2 points. On Clemens appearing sincere in his indignation at some of the questions, plus one point. Do we need to tally up the points? Why bother? According to a New York Times article on February 12th, some of the Congressmen scheduled to ask questions of Roger on February 13 received autographs and had pictures taken with him. So forget the point system we were working with, this corrupts the whole process.

It is impractical, but not impossible, for most players to have a loyalty to a team. Roger Clemens has chosen the route with loyalty to no one but himself and his product or bottom line. To protect this, he is appearing in front of Congress to defend his reputation and future earnings. He is indignant at the questioning. Other athletes have appeared before Congress with the same indignation and eventually got bagged. It's not the steroid use it's the perjury that ruins you. The only way I see to determine if Clemens is walking a thin line or outright telling the truth is the needles and gauze used for the injections now in federal investigators hands. CNN reports that Clemens lawyer, Rusty Hardin, would not indicate whether Clemens would voluntarily provide a DNA sample. If Clemens does provide the sample and there is no Clemens match with or without B12 or steroid residue, then that's more than reasonable doubt to give this guy his full reputation back. Without a sample, Clemens is walking that thin line indefinitely.

On the steroid issue in general I believe as kids, these athletes probably loved their chosen game. At a certain point in their lives though, they stopped wanting to be a baseball player and started dreaming of making a lot of money by being a baseball player. Something less than a love for the game replaced the game itself for these athletes. Many fans have changed as well and are also more preoccupied with the bloated salaries involved these days. With money as the principle motivation, ego a close second and the sport they play a distant third, the choice of using a performance enhancing drug to gain an edge on the competition is a no-brainer for more and more athletes.