THE ROCKET WINTER

BASEBALL?

I’m not sure if that’s what this post should actually be listed under, because I’m going to talk about Roger Clemens. For me, the Rocket isn’t a ball player anymore. I’ve been inundated with too many images of him walking around Washington D.C. in a suit to remember that he actually used to throw a baseball for a living. I could try and express just how tired I am of seeing and hearing about Clemens, but I’m not sure what kind of metaphor or analogy would do the feeling I have inside the proper justice. I guess it would be like searching for your car keys for an hour only to walk outside and find that your car has been stolen.

No, maybe the car hasn’t been stolen, but instead your girlfriend is cheating on you with your best friend in the backseat. It’s just got me that disgusted. It’s not so much what the story is all about, but the media’s amazing level of redundancy in its coverage and how this story has become the centerpiece of every sports program on television and the radio. The Clemens saga has been invented by a combination of his ego, the United States Congress and in the end the media, because as a sports fan I can’t believe that this whole situation is actually that big of a deal.

Yes, he is arguably the best pitcher that ever took a mound, but the fact is I don’t give a shit about whether or not he cheated. I don’t care if any Major League Baseball player cheated anymore. The simple fact is that the substances that everyone from Barry Bonds to Rafael Palmeiro to Mark McGwire to Clemens are accused of or have been proven to be using were not tested for when they took them. If they continued to take them after baseball began testing, as in Palmeiro’s case, they got caught and rightly so. But for a large portion of the players exposed in the Mitchell Report they can lean back on the fact that what they did, while cheating and dishonest and in many cases illegal, wasn’t prevented by any statute in the league’s rules.

This is why what Clemens is undergoing and what he has done on his own to try and prove his innocence really gets under my skin. The type of guys that do the wrong thing when they know they can’t get caught are no better than the guys that break the rules and are lucky enough to get away with it. If you’re a cheater, you’re a cheater. If you’re that type of a player or that type of a person, I couldn’t care less about what you want out of the public as far as their perception of your legacy. You sacrificed all of that Roger, when you took what you took. I don’t believe you are innocent, because, well because your trainer and your best friend both say that you used. That’s all this sports fan needs really.

If you think I’m being biased towards Roger simply because I’m sick of seeing this story everywhere I go, you’re a little off. I’m being biased, but it’s because I’ve always suspected that Clemens was using some sort of performance enhancing drug and that I’ve always found him to be a rather scrupulous character on the whole. I have memories from my childhood of him flipping off fans in Boston, I remember vividly watching him throw a piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza, and I am sickened every time some team like the Yankees or Astros throw money at him to pitch and then let him do whatever the hell he pleases, damn what the rest of his “teammates” may think.

The Rocket is always interested in what’s best for the Rocket, plain and simple. I don’t think he gives a shit about the other guys on his team when he signs these mercenary contracts to pitch for a half a season and the playoffs, or only throw at home games or when his son doesn’t have a little league tournament. That makes Roger a “teammate”. He is not to be placed outside of those quotations and the other players on those teams are not his teammates, but simply his coworkers, guys who facilitate him receiving a (unbelievably large) paycheck.

His situation reminds me a lot of what Barry Bonds is going through, and I’m sure that Barry is happy that Roger is here to take away some of the steroid allegation heat. Bonds and Clemens have both enjoyed the most impressive years of their career when players of previous generations have slowed down. I don’t care how much either of them trained more than the great players of the past, if you would have given Hank Aaron and Steve Carlton steroids, I bet they could’ve been great for a lot longer as well. You don’t get better, stronger and faster as you get older; it just doesn’t happen. What Clemens and Bonds have done is gone beyond cheating in their own profession. They are attempting to cheat the American public out of their concept of reality. The average sports fan knows that what both have done on the field is beyond belief, but now they expect us to suspend that belief even further and make us think that they thrived as their age ascended without the help of drugs and substances that were not even tested for by Major League Baseball.

We are not that stupid guys. We do not adore you to that extent. Don’t tell us that you didn’t use steroids or that you only took them because your trainer said it was okay or that “the cream” and “the clear” aren’t really steroids or that your best friend and training partner was using and that you miraculously weren’t. I don’t want to hear anymore about these guys and their innocence or guilt. My common sense tells me that you are a steroid/HGH using, selfish, dim-witted jock Roger and that’s all I need for now. ESPN can give you all the attention that you want, but I’ll probably only pay attention again when you’re being sentenced for perjury in front of a federal judge. That’s the least this do-nothing Congress can get accomplished for me, putting some overgrown jock behind bars and keeping his smug face away from my daily highlights.

I’ll have more on this tomorrow, with reactions from the televised hearings along with a few thoughts on the NBA West now that it looks like J-Kidd will be heading to Dallas.