Roger, Roger. What’s our Vector, Victor?
Posted: February 12th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 29 Comments »
Yes, it’s another new look for the ol’ blog. We’re like Madonna, people. We’re constantly changing — you want the slutty blog, bam, we’ll give you the wholesome Don’t Cry for Me Argentina blog. You want the fun-loving, on the beach, Cherish blog, then we put cones on our breasts. Yes. Cones. I’m stretching this scenario to levels of discomfort. Cherish! Cherish! It’s a new blog look, and not only that … I edited some actual code in an effort to make this page work (I’ve even tried adjusting the font size). So there’s a very good chance that this page will self-destruct by the time you reach the end of this paragraph. Enjoy it while you can. Also, please purchase this Casey Award winner. Yes, the blog look may be new, but like with our beloved Madonna, the shill remains the same.
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I will admit, with a slightly red-face, that at first I was semi-looking forward to this Roger Clemens-Brian McNamee slimedown. I was looking forward to it in that same guilty-pleasure way that I always looked forward to those Monday Night Football sideline reports from Eric Dickerson*. I’m not proud of myself. But, hey, I couldn’t help it. I mean here you have two guys — one threw a bat at Mike Piazza and later started cutting billion dollar deals which allowed him to be a part-time baseball player from his living room, the other was a one-time cop who left the force so he could hang around ballplayers and, if applicable, shoot them up with steroids and HGH. It looked like it would be a very entertaining event, sort of a Wimbledon final between Ann Coulter and Geraldo.
*I still have arguments with friends over what was the best part of Eric Dickerson’s epic “This is a cleat” sideline report during a Monday Night Football game. There was the actual report, of course, in which Dickerson — one of the great running backs in the history of the National Football League — held up a shoe to the camera during a rainstorm and said, more or less, “This is a cleat. When it gets muddy, football players use a cleat like this to run.” He managed to stretch it out for a solid 60 seconds without adding any new particulars to the “This is a cleat” breaking story. My personal favorite moment had to be when he finished, and he sent it back upstairs to Al and whoever else was in the booth back then. He said, “back to you guys,” and the camera cut back to the field, and there was what seemed like a two-hour pause. Then Michaels, without the slightest break in his voice said, “Second down and 9 from the 38 yard line …”
At first, the Clemens-McNamee main event looked like it would more than live up to my expectations. First you had the report itself with that special detail about McNamee spearing Clemens directly in the buttocks. Million dollar wound, indeed. Then, you had a wounded Clemens moaning on 60 Minutes that he could not believe people would doubt him after all that he’s done — after he turned back the Germans at Stalingrad, after he invented Liquid White-Out, after he gave his chicken recipe to Colonel Sanders for free, dammit! Now, people wouldn’t give him an inch. Not an inch! Maybe he should have just let that meteor crash into earth. Yes, that was entertaining.
I will say, though, it started to lose its appeal to me when Clemens and his trusty lawyer Rusty Hardin decided it might be a good idea to have Clemens call McNamee, tape the conversation and then play the tape at a press conference. Apparently they felt like a little entrapment and witness bullying might make Clemens look better to the masses. The tape did made McNamee seem like a creepy and somewhat pathetic guy who seemed genuinely scared of Clemens, which I guess was the point (I still cannot figure out any other possible point). And I found Clemens’ “I just need somebody to tell the truth!” line to be amusing — I really wish McNamee had shouted, “You can’t handle the truth!” right then, maybe throw in a little “Rog, we live in a world with walls that must be guarded.”
But other than that non-exchange, the taped call started to show the depth of desperation on the both sides. Clemens was playing tapes that proved nothing except that he’s a cretin. McNamee seemed in near-hysterics and kept talking about his sick child. It was all so raw — too raw. When I was young, I used to like Pro Wrestling — and by “Pro Wrestling,” I mean the Crockett Production Pro Wrestling they had in Charlotte, which tended to have matches where a stout guy called Wahoo McDaniel and an aging star named Ric Flair kept slapping each other’s chest. I remember there was a guy called the Boogie Woogie man who seemed to be in his in his late 60s and whose only real physical weapon as far I could tell involved bouncing off the ropes and running into people.* I remember there were several bad Russians called Koloffs who had the most comical Russian accents this side of Ivan Drago.
*I always loved Jerry Seinfeld’s amazement at how a wrestler could throw a guy into the ropes and he would always bounce off and come right back. It was like, “I don’t want to bounce back at you but I cannot stop myself. I’m a prisoner of inertia.”
Point is, I liked that kind of wrestling — corny, hokey, clearly fake, cartoonish, like the Batman TV Show. When the wrestlers started hitting the steroids themselves and started looking like condominiums with feet, when they started doing these complicated, high-flying moves and dangerous looking moves, the whole thing lost its appeal for me. It became a little too dark. Like the Batman movies. And then wrestling was gone, ultimate fighting was in, and I just don’t have the stomach for it.
That’s how this McNamee-Clemens thing started to turn for me — it became too real. I could never watch “Cops” either. Clemens threatened to sue. McNamee threatened to sue. Clemens’ people released a five million page statistical report that I guess was supposed to show that Clemens merely aged gracefully like so many other pitchers of his talents*. McNamee suddenly found some syringes and blood samples lying around the house. Clemens found some baseball announcers confirming that he wasn’t at some Jose Canseco party where we’re supposed to believe he first heard about this wonder drug called “Steroids.” It started to seem like the movie, “Rushmore,” with two semi-pathetic characters doing progressively desperate things to win the love of Olivia Williams. You want to send both these guys to their rooms without supper.
*I fall firmly on the, “You are chasing fool’s gold when you try to find proof of steroid use in the statistics” side of the argument. However, I do see that some people, including my friend Bob Costas (I know I’ve written my Costas story before — I should do that again sometime here) keep saying that while Barry Bonds’ late career was unprecedented and superhuman, Clemens merely fought off the ravages of old age. Well, yeah, Bonds was damned good as a hitter in his upper 30s. But this argument might understate just how good Roger Clemens was in his late baseball life.
Highest ERA+ season for a starter over the age of 40 (min. 100 ip).
1. Roger Clemens, 2005, 226 (age 42)
2. Cy Young, 1908, 194 (age 40)
3. Roger Clemens, 2006, 193 (age 43)
4. Randy Johnson, 2004, 177, (age 40)
5. Ted Lyons, 1942, 173 (age 41)
6. Pete Alexander, 1927, 157 (age 40)
7. Dennis Martinez, 1995, 152 (age 40)
8. Sal Maglie, 1957, 150 (age 40)
9. Roger Clemens, 2004, 146 (age 41)
10. Eddie Plank, 1917, 146 (age 41)
I dunno — seems pretty unprecedented to me. That 226 is not only 16 percent higher than the next best guy (who just happens to be the guy whose award he won), it’s the best of his career. At age 42. He has three of the Top 10 ERA+ seasons for 40-plus starters. Heck, you can break down the statistics any way you like, I get that. I’m just saying Clemens was flipping amazing as an old guy — amazing enough to get that $28,000,0022 contract as a part-time pitcher last year. It doesn’t prove in any way that he used steroids or anything else. It certainly doesn’t prove he didn’t use them either.
Like many, I don’t know who to believe. Or whom. Oh, I expect that Clemens used steroids — I’ve thought that for quite some time now. That’s been a pretty common belief among the people I know in baseball at least since the early 2000s. I mean one of those guys told me after the Mitchell Report came out, “I can’t believe people are making a big deal about Clemens — I mean didn’t everybody already know this?” Lookit: Here’s an ultra-intense pitcher who famously worked out in Texas like a crazed beast even as he got into his 40s. He was known for pitching on the edge. He was the most competitive son of a bitch anybody knew. He obviously could not give up the game — as shown by his many near retirements. And until the last few years, there was no testing for steroid use, no real backlash against it. What do I believe? Come on. I believe that NOT doing steroids in that environment is a lot like leaving the note on the parked car’s windshield after you hit it. I wish we had a list of people we KNOW didn’t use performance enhancers because I’d like to write an Anti-Mitchell Report about them.
No, when I say I don’t know who to believe — I just don’t know who will dive lower into the abyss. You would think it would be Clemens since this is his place in history in the balance and since his lawyer is named Rusty and likes saying stuff like, “I can tell you this; if (IRS agent Jeff Novitzky) ever messes with Roger, Roger will eat his lunch.” Good idea there Rusty; you get the feeling he’s seen one too many Andy Griffith as Matlock shows. But the McNamee people have proven to have plenty of pluck when it comes to shedding all dignity to ruin another man. I know there are people who side with the steroid-buying McNamee because he appears to have told something like the truth about Andy Pettitte and because he’s a former cop (I don’t really understand why the “former cop” thing should add any credibility to McNamee at all — Mark Fuhrman is a former cop too along with every serial killer in the movies since 1977). I know there are people who side with Clemens because he seems to be acting crazy like Dr. Richard Kimball from The Fugitive and, you know, it turned out Kimball was innocent (maybe Clemens’ steroids were taken by the one-armed man. Where’s Jose Lima anyway?).
I just think now it’s become a very sad thing, as we go spanning the muck to bring you the constant variety of sport. The depths of human drama. How low will Roger Clemens go to save his pitching legacy? How low will Brian McNamee go to complete his jailbird song? There are a few truths I remember from those days when I watched pro wrestling. The only numbers that matter are in your checking account. Nothing stops the cheering faster than a good kick in the groin. And masked men never get the girl. I think that’s why I liked it. The bad men had the decency to wear masks.
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Once you’ve hopped on a steep, muddy slope, you don’t stop until you’ve hit bottom.
As for your guess about Clemens, I think you’re right. There was no testing and no penalties. No one in the media much cared. In other sports, sports where the athletes don’t make nearly the money baseball players make, they ban you for life if you’re caught and they’re near fascists in terms of testing regime. And, yet, those athletes – loads of them – still use PEDs. So why are we to believe in a sport filled with money, without a testing program or penalties, that most players didn’t use. It defies logic.
Anyway, love the wrestling tie-in. Maybe MLB should legalize PEDs so long as you wear a mask on the field. Or just legalize it for catchers.
I keep thinking that each and every time McNamee or Clemens says something outrageous, Bud Selig and Donald Fehr smile a little wider. Paraphrasing Mitchell, the Report was supposed to be about what went wrong and how to fix it, not an expose of which players were or were not shooting up. But instead of focusing on the Union’s stonewalling of testing and the Commissioner’s office’s willing neglect of the subject while both sides counted their billions, we now can’t seem to get enough of the Roger and Brian show. Thanks to Waxman, Hardin, and a cast of thousands, the story is no longer how MLB was awash in illegal performance enhancers, but rather the circus he said / he said about a single player and his tarnished legacy.
Actually, that overly long statistical report compiled by his lawyer (who obviously bought an old version of Mathematica when he was an undergrad and was just happy to have a reason to bust it out again…or something) has been challenged by a coterie of statistics and economics professors, and subsequently blogged about on the NYTimes Freakonomics blog.
Here are the relevant links:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/breaking-down-the-clemens-report-a-guest-post/#more-2313
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/analyzing-roger-clemens-a-step-by-step-guide/#more-2314
Their conclusions were, in short, that something bizarre was going on with Clemens’ early dominance, regression to league averages, and then resurgent dominance. That is anything but a typical pattern.
Can we just settle this with a cage match and be done with it? I’d love to Clemens and McNamee in the squared circle. I picture Clemens in one of those single strap get-ups, like Andre the Giant, while McNamee would absolutely go with the long tights look. (And is Debbie Clemens the perfect wrestling “manager”, or what?)
Clemens, being a professional workout machine, would almost certainly be slaughtering McNamee for most of the match, but I get the sneaking suspicion that McNamee would pull the infamous “foreign object” out of his trunks, and somehow blind/maim/disable Clemens. Debbie would certainly climb the cage and try to intervene on behalf of her crippled man, only to be thrown into the turnbuckle and knocked unconscious, while McNamee pinned her blinded husband.
During all of this, Henry Waxman would be screaming, “I can’t believe the referee (IRS Agent Jeff Novitzky) didn’t see that foreign object!”
Seems as plausible as anything else that’s happened.
How prolific was Ric Flair? Did anybody wrestle in more places than him? He was everywhere.
This can probably all be blamed on a dropped call. Remember the Cingular/AT&T Wireless ad? I think they have now pulled it. Here’s the transcript.
Roger Clemens: Hey honey, I’m out here with the guys and they’re really pushing me hard to come back and take steroids and play another season in New York. What do you think?
Debbie Clemens: Are you kidding?
RC: Just say no. Say the word “no” and I’ll stay retired. Just say “no” and I won’t do it.
Dropped call.
RC: Ok. Great! Guys, I’m back (on the juice.) She’s so happy she’s speechless!
Joe, Joe.
It was Koloff, not Kolof. The Russian Bear, Ivan Koloff, and his “nephew,” the Russian Nightmare, Nikita Koloff.
Oh, and the Boogie Woogie Man, Jimmy Valiant, was only in his mid-40s.
Dammit.
The thing I don’t get about the Clemens mess, and I really wonder why it hasn’t been part of all the nonsense the Clemens people are spewing (assuming it hasn’t–I haven’t heard it, but I didn’t read the “report” either), is that while Clemens has been astonishingly good since turning 40, he’s done it in an old-guy kind of way. He certainly doesn’t throw 96 anymore; seems to me he’s generally been around 88. He’s averaged about 6 1/3 innings and completed all of two games since starting his age 40 season (and one of the two was an 84-pitch, 8-inning loss). He’s rarely topped 110 pitches in a game.
So, if not by increasing his velocity or stamina (and I’m pretty convinced that anybody who threw in the mid-to-high 90s in his prime and who hasn’t totally let himself go since then could go out there at age 42 and, without regard to movement, location, or success, throw about 100 pitches at 85-88 MPH every six days or so), how did the steroids help him become this rejuvenated superstar? Do they help him get more movement on his slider (which sounds vaguely plausible, I guess)? Because while he’s not exactly Moyer or Maddux, the Clemens of the last several years has appeared to me like a guy who was getting it done a lot more with guile and location than with overpowering stuff. So I don’t get it.
Clemens thinks he is Al Pachino in the movie Scent of a Woman–ranting against the injustice that has been done, telling the world to #$%@ off. “I don’t know if it was right or wrong to take steroids, but you are killing the soul and spirit of baseball by attacking my good name.” When he started meeting with Congress members and posing for photo-ops, he morphed into George–hoping his fame, position, and denials would get him special treatment. I’ll be interested to see his testimony on Wednesday. Will he be macho Pachino or “I didn’t have my glasses” George?
Never watched much wrestling, but I remembered a guy named Wahoo McDaniel playing linebacker for the Jets in the old AFL days (you don’t really forget linebackers named “Wahoo McDaniel). Anyway, turns out it was the same guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahoo_McDaniel
Someone asked yesterday:
PS – how come the date/time stamp is 5 hours ahead of where I am?
I think it’s on Greenwich Mean Time. Probably the default from the software Joe’s using. It’s 7 hours ahead of me in MST, which is GMT.
At the prices they pay big league athletes, I really don’t care if they’re ruining their health. I want them to pump up on anything that makes them better performers.
Frankly I could never quite discern how Tommy John Surgery, which basically creates Frankenstein arms, is okay but the juice is considered “cheating.”
When 350-pound linebackers can run the 40 in 3-seconds flat (okay, I’m exagerating), I have a sneaking supicion it’s not only due to good diet and work ethic.
Hell, juice ‘em up and let ‘em take the consequences. And the paycheck.
I have long wanted to stage the Drug-Enhanced Olympics. It’d be a TV ratings giant! The Russian women weightlifters would snatch and grab a Buick. Some pimply-faced geek would string together 15 10-second hundred meter dashes to win the metric mile in under two minutes (and who cares if his heart explodes at the tape?).
We already worship anorexic pre-teen gymnasts whose push-the-limit training staves off menstruation until they’re old enough to drink. With the right steroid cocktail (and laying off the Wheaties) Bob Richards could pole vault the Statue of Liberty tomorrow. I might even watch that on pay-for-view.
“How prolific was Ric Flair? Did anybody wrestle in more places than him? He was everywhere.”
And still in the squared circle! I think its hysterical that Joe is calling him “an aging star” back when he was exchanging chops with Wahoo McDaniel! That was about 25 years ago!
WOOOOH!
It is kind of sad to see Flair nowadays, with man-boobies, still doing his shtick. Kinda like Roger, desperately clinging to the life he’s known for so long …
To be the man, you have to beat the man …. ?
Ric Flair is still a ‘pro wreslter’ and still slapping guys’ chests. Luckily for him, his sagging man-boobs absorb much of the punishment directed his way. If ever there was a case of an athlete hanging on too long, this has to be it.
Flair used to be one of the most dynamic and entertaining (some of his interviews from early in his career will leave you in hysterics) characters to be found in professional wrestling. Now, he is a running gag with a fake tan and a bleached blond comb-over.
Is there a better example from the major sports of an athlete continuing to lace ‘em up long after he/she should have been put out to pasture? I think you would be hard-pressed to find one.
Man, does this bring back memories….
Wahoo McDaniels, Ric Flair, Paul Jones, Ricky Steamboat (before his “Dragon” days), the Fabulous Freebirds, Crusher Blackwell (all 500 lbs of him), Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin, Wildfire Tommy Rich, Harley Race, etc.
Joe, maybe you need to write an all-wrestling column or two. Maybe it would take your mind off baseball for awhile.
I remember Roger’s inglorious exit from Boston and Dan Duquette’s famous pronouncement that he was done. You could feel how pissed Clemens was. I think if Lucifer himself appeared to him at the crossroads and offered him a few more CY young seasons for his soul and the souls of his family he would have sold them before his blood was dry on the contract. He’s that much of a competitor.
I, and many others I’m sure, have been speculating about Clemens and Steroids for YEARS and this latest “Revelation” is no surprise. The only drama left for me is whether or not, and how badly, Petitte sold him out in his testimony.
I think what McNamee said is true, Roger doesn’t want to believe it, or admit it so badly, that he’s convinced himself it’s not true. The whole thing is pathetic.
And I know this will ruffle some feathers but as a Bonds admirer (his BASEBALL skills) I am so glad Clemens has taken some heat of him and is now sharing poster-boy status. It has been so unfair in my mind the beating Bonds is taking when I always felt his misguided decision to take ‘roids was in defense of the game that Sosa and McGwire made a mockery of. A game his Godfather and father played honestly and passionately.
Anyway, I blame Selig. Period. He turned his back, condoned and that atmosphere encouraged. He needs to take the fall. (Though I did enjoy Monkeyhawk’s suggestions)
“Clemens has been astonishingly good since turning 40, he’s done it in an old-guy kind of way. He certainly doesn’t throw 96 anymore; seems to me he’s generally been around 88.”
That’s not true. Clemens still had plenty of heat on his fastball up unil last season. It was only then that his fastball seemed to have lost some of its zip, and even then he could get it up to 92,93 when needed.
I guess even steroids has its limits.
Didn’t read the blog – sorry too long. But fantastic title.
“I remember Roger’s inglorious exit from Boston and Dan Duquette’s famous pronouncement that he was done.”
You don’t remember it very well then because Duquette never actually said that Roger was in “the twilight of his career”. This is the exact quote:
“The Red Sox and our fans were fortunate to see Roger Clemens play in his prime and we had hoped to keep him in Boston during the twilight of his career,” said Duquette, who joined Harrington on a conference call yesterday afternoon. “We just want to let the fans know that we worked extremely hard to sign Roger Clemens. . . . We made him a substantial, competitive offer, by far the most money ever offered to a player in the history of the Red Sox franchise.”
It’s not surprising that Clemens misinterpreted with Duquette said because he’s a moron, but for the main stream press to constantly and consistently get the quote incorrect is something else all together.
What I think that Duquette meant was: a long term deal could’ve kept Roger in Boston through out the end of his career. He never said or implied that his career was over, just that he could’ve been a Red Sox until the end.
Duquette was terrible with the press, but was a decent general manager. And with the information that he had at the time, it’s easy to see why he didn’t cave in to Clemens’ salary demands. Besides, John Harrington had taken over the negotiation and that snake let Duquette twist in the wind over the fall out.
Yes,
Big Chief Wahoo McDaniel was an original Jet.
Those guys stayed in a beachfront hotel on the sandbar I called home as a kid. We would wander the halls, knocking on doors, asking, “Do you play for the Jets?” Chief Wahoo would always sign something, and often tell us which other doors to knock on. Man, he was round. ROUND. I have no idea if or how Pro Wrestling has changed, but Pro Football wouldn’t hire a guy in Wahoo’s body to be the water boy anymore.
Joe, what can you make of this story (hands him newspaper)
I can make a hat, or a broach, or a pteradactyl.
anyone here old enough to remember the REAL fake wrestlers – bobo brazil, gorgeous george, fritz von erich, antonino rocca? those were the days.
great piece joe, but i really miss that dog’s ass at the top of the page :…(
anyone here old enough to remember the REAL fake wrestlers – bobo brazil, gorgeous george, fritz von erich, antonino rocca? those were the days.
Jim, you’re right. Those guys were the best. I haven’t been able to stomach pro wrestling since I quit watching Bobo and Fritz.
Those new fake guys couldn’t fake it like those old fake guys.
Wahoo McDaniel was cool, but I don’t care about wrestling.
Roger Clemens lying about everything as loud as he can (my best guess, but I wouldn’t vote to convict under a “beyond reasonable doubt” standard) is just evidence that he bought into the contemporary corporate ethical schematic in which denial need only be plausible if it isn’t necessary.
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Haven’t you heard? Roidger also invented post-its. Brian told him to make them yellow.
Speaking of Lucifer, just use your imagination, and substitute Clemens in the James Brown role. You know he would have done this if he had the chance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQcnTbFDVIM