The Rocket In The Docket

Whoever is in charge of giving a story legs, thank you sooooo much for the current Roger Clemens steroid fiasco.

This thing is the gift that just keeps on giving.

First, Clemens and Andy Pettitte get outed for using illegal performance enhancers by their former trainer Brian McNamee in the Mitchell Report.

Then, giving tons of credibility to the charges that McNamee made in the report, Pettitte ‘fesses up and cops to having done exactly what McNamee said he did.

Then we get 24 days of utter silence from The Rajah, while every right-thinking person in the western hemisphere is wondering why it’s taking so long for him to respond…unless, of course, there is some truth to McNamee’s claim, in which case the time taken is being used to rev up the spin cycle.

While waiting for something, anything, from Clemens, this knucklehead releases a video to YouTube (!!), denying all charges. YouTube? YouTube??

What, the Weekly World News couldn’t squeeze him in under the banner headline about the two-headed cows being abducted by aliens? But wait…there’s more.

Sure enough, Clemens stages an “interview” on 60 Minutes that should have shamed the company that gave us Edward R. Murrow and investigative journalism. Had this sham been any more softballish, there would be a keg of beer at each base.

Next, we get a lawsuit (!!), where Clemens is suing McNamee for defamation of character. Just for kicks, I went to a legal website to read up on defamation of character, and the site was quick to advise that proving defamation is difficult under the best of circumstances, even if the defendant is lying. Basically, Clemens is trying to curry any public favor he can by saying, “See? I’m suing…” even though this kind of suit rarely pays off.

Finally, there’s this spurious “tape” that Clemens and his people have been playing, claiming that McNamee is recanting.

All of this, had it been done by itself, is enough to keep me writing for the next year…but it only gets better.

Like Doyle Brunson holding the case ace on a royal flush, McNamee’s lawyers have re-raised every time Clemens pushes into the pot because they know they are holding the best cards.

When Clemens went semi-public on YouTube, McNamee’s lawyers immediately called on him to meet the real press.

When Clemens denied having ever used steroids, McNamee’s lawyers double-dog dared him to make the same statements under oath.

When Clemens and his camp began running selected excerpts of this phone conversation to friendly media outlets, McNamee’s lawyers have rightly demanded that Clemens’ camp turn over the entire tape willingly…or, absent that, that the tape be subpoenaed into evidence.

See, here’s the point: no matter what Clemens “seems to” say, McNamee’s lawyers have responded aggressively and in a way that Joe Couch Potato can readily understand, because it makes sense.

Videos on YouTube? Try talking to a room full of ink-stained wretches that are smelling blood.

Namby-pamby denials and running your mouth to friendly interviewers? Try saying the same thing under oath, tough guy.

Oh, you have a tape? Great. Let’s all sit down and listen to the whole thing together, you, me, and a big ol’ press contingent, and lets see what’s really on that tape, J. Edgar…

Unless, of course, you have reasons for not wanting to meet with reporters in a genuine question-and-answer press conference…y’know, because they might ask you the kind of questions that Mike Wallace conveniently left out.

Questions like: so what’s on the whole tape?

What took you so long to respond?

Why have you responded like this?

Why did you need to get injected in your buttocks with lidocaine? Does numbing your butt help you pitch better?

Why did you need to get injected with B-12 at all? Seems to me that you get the same benefit from swallowing a completely legal and over-the-counter pill with B-12, like, say, a Flintstones Chewable…

And the real question, the one that Clemens absolutely cannot avoid:

Why would McNamee tell the truth about Pettitte and lie about you, especially since he had to know that to lie under those circumstances would lead to all kinds of nasty legal problems later…and especially since he didn’t have to say a stinkin’ thing?

The best part is yet to come. Clemens will have to face the music soon, and this time he will be under oath

It sez so right here that you will hear the finest parsing of the English language since William Jefferson Clinton debated what the definition of “is” is…

Stay tuned.

Quick Slants - Stuff To Be Thankful For

I am personally thankful for each and every one of the following:

That my name isn’t Barry Bonds or Michael Vick.

That I’m nowhere near a retail outlet of any sort on the day after Thanksgiving.

That I’m not in charge of spinning Nick Saban’s latest verbal gaffe.

That, of all the names that will be published in George Mitchell’s report on steroids in baseball, mine won’t be one of them.

That I’m not a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and traveling to Foxboro this weekend.

That I’m not Isaiah Thomas.

That it ain’t me getting blowed up by Mo-Jo Drew on Youtube.

That I’m not Scott Boras.

That I’m not Stephon Marbury.

That I’m not the guy who signed Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson to big money contract extensions.

That I’m not the guy who gave Ahman Green a big ol’ pile of cash.

That I’m not the head coach of the worst Notre Dame football team in school history.

That I’m not Lloyd Carr.

That I’ll only get about a billion fewer questions about coaching at Michigan than Les Miles will.

That I have never driven to Wendy’s naked and drunk.

That I don’t have 9 different children by 9 different women.

That I’m not about to serve a 4 game suspension for smoking the herb.

That I’m not being reinstated after being suspended for smoking the herb.

That I’m not being reinstated to the worst team in history after being suspended for smoking the herb.

That I’m not the guy paying A-Rod $275 million over the next 10 years.

That I’m not a Bulls season ticket holder.

That I’m not the guy who had to set the largest point spread in NFL history and get his bosses to sign off on it.

That I’m not the guy who signed off on the largest point spread in NFL history.

That I don’t own the Vikings, Adrian Peterson notwithstanding.

That I don’t own the Supersonics, Kevin Durant notwithstanding.

That I’m not a Steinbrenner heir...as far as I know...

That I’m not the guy who has to revise all those Elias Baseball Abstracts when Barry Bonds does a perp walk and gets the Kennesaw Mountain Landis boot.

That I’m not Bud Selig.

That I’m not Bud Selig.

That I’m not Bud Selig. (Trust me, it bore repeating.)

That our next president will not be a woman.

That I don’t live in Los Angeles, the second-largest market in the U.S., and no pro football team to speak of, U.S.C. notwithstanding.

That I don’t have to share a locker room with Kobe Bryant.

That I haven’t won the Tour De France in the last decade.

That I haven’t won a gold medal in the Olympics in anything in the last two decades.

That I’m not the damn near unintelligible NFL analyst Emmitt Smith, an alleged Florida graduate.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for putting the NHL into WitSec with The Erasernator.

That I don’t live in a state that has twice elected actors (!!) as Republican governors.

That I don’t hang out with Pac-Man Jones, not even on accident.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the abortion otherwise known as “D-War.”

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the crowd noise in Indianapolis.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for releasing “Grindhouse” on Easter Weekend...I mean, really...

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the Homeland Security Department (gee, thanks a bunch, Dubya...idiot).

That I’m not the Republican that will lose by 48 states in the next presidential election.

That I’m not one of the few remaining thousands ducking the hail of bullets in Detroit, recently voted the U.S.’s most dangerous city...

That I'm not one of the few remaining thousands ducking the hail of bullets in Detroit, recently voted as the U.S.'s second-most dangerous city, after, of course, Detroit.

That I'm not looking for a house, a car, or a job in Detroit.

That this isn’t a political column.

Sometimes.

That I’m not the guy who has to live with banning alcohol on team flights and sponsorships from Anheuser-Busch and Miller...not that there’s a conflict of interest or anything, I’m just sayin’...

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder.

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder.

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder. (See Selig, Bud.)

That NASCAR will never overtake MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in the public eye, because if there’s one thing that rednecks love more than pro wrestling and flaming car wrecks, it’s genuine and bloody whupass on pay-per-view.

And finally, that for all of my carping, sports remain a refuge in a vast sea of entertainment “meh” because I remain fully convinced that at least some of the people are trying some of the time.

Don’t believe me? Just ask that helmet-shaped bruise in the middle of Shawne Merriman’s rib cage...heh heh heh...

For The Record, Part 2

This is the second of 2 articles pondering the significance of Barry Bonds breaking the all-time home run record.

A most amazing thing happened after Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's home run record.

Aaron himself appeared on video to congratulate Bonds for the achievement.

Aaron, who had steadfastly refused to say anything positive or negative about Bonds as the latter approached the Holy Grail of baseball records, recorded nothing less than an eloquent and dignified congratulatory speech that really put the capper on the occasion.

Never mind that Aaron never should have had to go through this indignity in the first place.

This act by Aaron highlights his character and his generation.

You see, Aaron came up in an era in which black folks didn't air each other's dirty laundry in public, because that just ain't what people did.

Aaron came up in an era in which black folks believed that decent character would eventually win out, despite the evils being perpetrated against them. It didn't matter if another black man was less than perfect. In that era, all black men were united against a common foe: white society.

We cannot make too little of this. Laws existed that restricted a black man's freedoms, even his pleasures. Laws existed that restricted a black man's movements and ability to earn. And those were the ones that were on the books.

Other laws existed regarding such improprieties like a black man cutting his eyes at a white woman, or offering impertinence to a white person, that were paid for in blood after dark.

As a joke of the era went, one black man would ask another, "How you doin'?"

The other would reply, "White folks still in the lead..."

At which both would laugh, or grunt, or not in sympathy.

One did not throw another black man under the bus in Aaron's era, not when there was a common enemy more than willing to throw both the accused and the accuser under the bus together.

So Aaron did what he'd grown up doing: he forgave another man.

When Aaron endured death threats and insults of the vilest kind, when FBI protection had to be afforded to his daughter, when he had to be escorted by an armed policeman as he approached Babe Ruth's mark, he forgave.

He could have spoken out like so many black athletes of that time did...but they were younger, weren't they? They weren't riding buses in the Jim Crow South of the 1950s. Those athletes were children in the 60s when Malcolm X was assassinated; to them, the battle had always been fought that way. For Aaron, for the generation prior to that, the battle had been won by being the better man.

That bears repeating: the battle had been won by being the better man.

Aaron has publicly and privately spoken about carrying on the example that Jackie Robinson set, professionally and personally.

When the obviously chemically-enhanced Barry Bonds broke his record, he could have reviled, just as Robinson could have reviled when the Phillies gave him the kind of insults that might have made a modern hood rat "catch a case."

Instead, as he'd done throughout his career, throughout his life, Henry Aaron chose to take the higher road.

In doing so, he forever provided a poignant reminder of the gulf of character that exists between himself and the eternally-tainted Bonds.

And, quoting the very first words out of his mouth when he finally broke Babe Ruth's record,

"Thank God it's over."

For The Record, Part 1

This is the first of two articles reflecting on Barry Bonds' becoming baseball's all-time home run king.

I saw the dinger.

THE dinger.

Number 756.

Any way you say it, the number demands a certain respect.

And yet, I find myself feeling weird right now.

Not ambivalent, but weird.

There's just something wrong when such a colossal indignity is committed publicly and nothing is done about it.

While something may yet be done is really immaterial. After all, no matter what the NCAA and the Big Ten may say about Michigan's tainted records with the Fab Five, we all saw freshmen play in the NCAA Championship Game. All the money that any boosters might have given them didn't make them better players, only richer. We saw them. They existed. Their deeds occurred in real life. We have chosen to ignore their deeds because of off-court malfeasance, but that's really it, isn't it?

We choose to ignore what really happened.

In other words, we're trying to edit reality.

Barry Bonds, most certainly chemically-enhanced, really hit his 756th career home run.

I will not recount the evidence against him, mountainous though it is.

All I can say is that, whatever we may choose to do with his record, it is now finally his, now and forever.

Any future discussion of home run kings will inevitably have to mention him, because, love him or hate him, he still had to face major league pitching and hit the baseball out of the yard 756 times, more than anyone else.

An asterisk only tempts us to alter reality, just like the asterisk that haunted Roger Maris to his death. The fact is that Maris hit more home runs than Babe Ruth in a season, number of games be damned. Maris didn't make the schedule, any more than Ruth did. Maris actually stood in and hit 61 home runs in a single season, more than any man before him and any man up to the benighted Mark McGwire.

When that asterisk was finally removed, we admitted what we already knew all along: Maris had really done what we had all seen him do.

Just as Pete Rose has done what we have all seen him do, some 4256 times. Rose's eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame really doesn't matter, because the record he posted is unlikely to ever be broken. We can make him persona non grata at official baseball events, we can keep him from ever darkening the Hall's door, but his presence looms over the Hall because his record stands.

He actually hit a baseball safely 4256 times. There's only one other guy that has as many as 4000 career hits, and only one other guy after him that has as many as 3700 career hits.

This is where we are with Barry Bonds. We can choose not to put his records in the books, just like we do for Sadaharu Oh and Josh Gibson. In Gibson's case, we choose not to acknowledge his records because the white, er, right people didn't see them...never mind ample eyewitness testimony to the contrary. In Oh's case, his were only hit in Japan...as though hitting 800+ home runs in Japan is somehow easier than hitting 714 against competition that didn't include black pitchers.

I mean, it's too late for any recriminations now. It's too late to take anything back.

What? Are we going to go back through every one of Barry Bonds' home runs and magically erase them from the box score? Are we going to change the scores of the games in which those home runs occurred?

Let's not forget that all of those home runs did not occur in a vacuum, but within the context of a major league baseball season, which usually ends with a champion, absent Bud Selig's thumb-fingered interference. Bonds' teams haven't always been as bad as the current edition. What do we do to some deserving team that got cheated out of a victory because of a Bonds blast?

Send them roses? Offer an apology? Do some fantasy league crap and retroactively award them the playoff spot they didn't get because Bonds was hitting out of his mind for a chemically-enhanced season or two?

No, these 756 home runs really happened, because baseball let them happen.

And baseball let them happen because we let baseball let them happen.

Had we stood up and been counted, had we spoken with our wallets instead of our handwritten signs, this might have been averted.

Instead, we supported this charade. The more he hit, the more of us came to the yard and bought his jersey and signed up for the baseball package on our local cable providers and bought products advertised on baseball broadcasts...and Major League Baseball took note.

So they gave him a pass.

Instead of keeping him from the pinnacle of baseball records, they paved the way for him. Baseball drug its heels at ever investigating steroids, despite growing evidence that the drug was everywhere, then appointed a toothless investigator with no subpoena power to "look into the matter."

All that was a sham. All that was for our benefit.

Baseball only gave us what we wanted...then, and now.

Then, we wanted commercials that said "Chicks dig the long ball."

Now, we'll want asterisks...or expunged records...or some other equally faux punishment for things that really happened.

Barry Bonds has really hit 756 home runs.

This ain't the Matrix. We can't alter reality.

He really did it.

And it is our fault.

Jason Giambi and The Truth

I saw an interesting piece in USA Today about Jason Giambi and steroids. If nothing else, while I can appreciate Giambi’s candor and honesty in discussing the great There/Not There of MLB, I still believe that he did not go far enough.

While talking to Bob Nightengale, the 2000 AL MVP offered what should be considered the only acceptable mea culpa of the steroids era: “I was wrong for doing that stuff…(w)hat we should have done a long time ago was stand up – players, ownership, everybody – and said: ‘We made a mistake.’ We should have apologized back then…”

Giambi deserves no small amount of credit for this statement, even as it does appear to restate the obvious. The fact is that MLB – “players, ownership, everybody” – has engaged in systematic collusion, obfuscation, and stony silence. Someone of his stature should have spoken up like this a long time ago, but various reasons have been given, and none of them wash. Managers pretend that they have no idea what’s going on in locker rooms; owners have no idea why their star slugger’s helmet size continues to change; and players both former and current cite the spurious “code of the locker room,” as though locker rooms are exempt from the law of the land.

Giambi, without naming names, without betraying confidences, still said what we, the public, have been wanting to hear for years: yes, they were doing it. Yes, they were wrong. And yes, something should have changed years ago. After all, isn’t sport supposed to exemplify outdated concepts like “fair play?” Don’t we teach our kids that cheating is wrong?

But an exchange near the end of the article between Nightengale and Giambi illustrates the great gulf between perception and reality that still exists with regard to steroids.

Giambi says, “That stuff didn’t help me hit home runs. I don’t care what people say, nothing is going to give you that gift of hitting a baseball.”

Nightengale asks, “So why did you take steroids?”

Giambi responds, “Maybe one day, I’ll talk about it, but not now.”

This is exactly the problem. Giambi, on the one hand, appears to be honest, and within the space of the same interview, reverts to classic MLB disingenuousness. Nightengale’s question is THE question of the steroid problem: if they don’t help, as so many major leaguers aver, then why take them?

We are supposed to believe that being stronger doesn’t help one hit home runs? We’re supposed to believe that maintaining one’s strength throughout the marathon that is a baseball season doesn’t help one hit home runs? OF COURSE THEY HELP. No one is suggesting that steroids help eye-hand coordination. However, if strength is the issue, then steroids become a must for baseball players trying to make the big club, because strength is the difference between a seeing-eye single and a 6-3 put-out, or the difference between a fly ball at the warming track and a home run.

Let’s put it in even more practical terms: over 500 at-bats, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .250 hitter is only 25 hits. That’s it. Are we not supposed to believe that being a little bit stronger won’t make a visible difference over that crucial 25 at-bat window?

Steroids increase strength, which means that balls are hit harder, which means that guys on steroids have a clear advantage over guys that are clean. No competitor wants to go into a contest at a distinct disadvantage, which explains why steroids are so rampant in the big leagues. A guy at Triple A will not sit idly by while some wunderkind with a syringe gets a May call-up; he’s going to call Dr. Feelgood as well. The 23rd man on a major league bench is not going to let the wunderkind from the farm take his job, so he calls the dope man as well. The hotshot first baseman, in his walk year, is not going to give up a possible MVP and a New York Yankee payday because steroids don’t help one hit home runs.

Once again, when were you taking steroids, Jason Giambi? Oh, that’s right, it was during that magical 2000 season when, as a free agent-to-be, you won the AL MVP and then cashed one of George Steinbrenner’s immense checks.

But they don’t help.

Not much.