You know how it is – IF you are accused, you MUST be guilty.
And that’s Roger Clemens. After 4 years and millions of dollars spent, Roger gets his day in court, but it doesn’t matter because reporters have long since decided that no matter what ANYONE says, he’s guilty. One idiot guy, whose name I refuse to repeat, actually compared Clemens to a large market baseball team and the US government to some poor small market team, unable to compete.
Really?
Check this from Lester Munson, ESPN:
“Agents from the FBI, the IRS and the DEA have devoted countless hours to the pursuit of Clemens, digging into every aspect of his life. They gathered thousands of pages of documents, and they went all over the United States interviewing anyone who knew anything about Clemens.
Here is a list of the documents they examined:
• 15,732 pages of Clemens family bank records from J.P. Morgan Chase.
• 1,139 pages of records from American Express credit cards.
• More than 300 pages of medical records from MLB teams for which Clemens played.
• Hundreds of pages of phone records from nine companies.
In addition to reviewing the documents, a group of 93 agents interviewed 179 individuals in 68 locations and produced 235 reports of their interviews. The Clemens legal team prepared a map that shows the extent of the agents’ work. In many of the interviews, the agents were accompanied either in person or on the phone by assistant U.S. attorneys Steven Durham and Daniel Butler, who led the government trial team.”
Small market team, my ass.
And after ALL of those countless hours and all that search, they couldn’t find even ONE piece of evidence, even ONE witness to corroborate anything McNamee claimed? Not ONE? Even McNamee’s own WIFE contradicted McNamee’s account.
The reporters, who can’t be bothered to, you know, like actually READ the original court transcripts, insist that Andy Pettitte (who, by the way, is not only an admitted HGH user – I refuse to call it a PED, because it isn’t – but a guy who lied THREE times about using) changed his story about Clemens, when he repeated his original testimony to Congress verbatim.
Why on earth they have ignored/excused Pettitte’s illegal drug use AS WELL AS his repeated lying about it, but yet insist that Clemens MUST be guilty of drug use based upon ONLY the word of a man who is a drug dealer, rapist and general dirtball, I absolutely do NOT get.
I think that Roger Clemens has earned their undying hatred because he absolutely refused to confess and cry – and that is what the media was hoping for, something sensational. They just love all the boo hooing. See Andy Pettitte – you see, they want to “forgive” players for doing whatever they could to play. They just LOVE Pete Rose for saying that he’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball, but they HATE guys who actually mean it and do it.
They want to be able to insist that Clemens only succeeded because he “cheated” by using HGH, which has not been proved to do one single thing that could by any definition be considered performance enhancing in healthy young men. They want to believe that Dan Duquette was right and that Clemens succeeded after Boston waved byebye only because he was a drug user, and won’t look at any statistic except win/loss record. WHY they want to believe this, I do NOT get, but they do.
Maybe it’s because they see Clemens as an UN-humble mercenary (unlike almost every other baseball player there is) instead of a umble “team player” guy like Pettitte. No idea why on earth Pettitte has been labeled as umble, but it’s what the media has decided and there you go.
But really, how IS any accused person supposed to respond if he is not guilty? After the Mitchell report came out, Clemens, like a few others, proclaimed his innocence. He said it himself, not in some fake sounding statement issued by some PR guy. Media demanded he say it to a group of reporters, live, not Mike Wallace and fawning groupies on a canned TV show. He did. They demanded he prove his innocence by suing MacNamee. He did. They demanded he say it under oath before Congress. He did. It didn’t change anyone’s opinion.
Mitchell and his little Congressmoron friends demanded that the Department of Justice investigate and indict Clemens for perjury for daring to stand up to bullying. They obliged their old buddies and Clemens STILL insisted he was innocent and spent a HUGE amount of his hard earned money, refused to cop a plea, went to trial, demanded a jury, and earned his verdict of not guilty.
It’s still not enough. Nothing will ever be enough. If Brain McNamee confessed on his death bed that he made the whole thing up because the government people insisted he do so in order to stay out of jail, the media STILL wouldn’t believe it. Absolutely NOTHING whatsoever would do it.
This makes me understand why Perry Mason was always so intent on making the guilty person confess in court – because even when a person is found not guilty, they really aren’t considered not guilty, just not convicted. I’ve seen videos of prosecutors and law enforcement persons making statements about a person who had been convicted, who was protesting his/her innocence, saying how terrible it was that convicted person wouldn’t confess, take responsibility, apologise. Yet, I don’t see videos of those self same prosecutors admitting fault or apologising when those convicted persons are absolved by DNA evidence and found to be innocent.
When I hear people insist that Clemens HAD to have used drugs, I ask then why did he HAVE to? Because he was good. And besides, him throwing the bat at Mike Piazza could only have been roid rage. I asked if this meant that when Ty Cobb jumped into the stands and beat up some heckler that he must have also been guilty of steroid use. (No, that’s different.) Or when Juan Marichal attacked Johnny Roseboro with a bat, that it was proof positive that Juan was shooting up steroids (which most certainly DID exist back then) right? Oh noooooooo, guys wouldn’t NEVAH have used no illegal drugs back in the Golden Age and besides, amphetamines don’t improve performance unless you are drunk or hung over or tired or sore or hurting or unfocused or something.
Who was that politician of 30-40 years back who was accused of some heinous felony who was actually proved innocent, who said – now where do I go to get my reputation back? He never found out where and he was exiled from his former pals and existence. Accused = guilty, no matter what.
You might could shrug and say – well, if Clemens had just confessed, false or not, and not stared down George Mitchell, Bud Selig and their little political friends, he might be enjoying the good life like Pettitte. Sometimes, you have to lie in order to protect what you have. Like Pettitte did. And look how things turned out for him. He’s back pitching for his Yankees and the BBWAA has declared him to be a Good Guy, drug use, lies and all, and he’s going into the Hall of Fame, in spite of the fact that he’s grossly inferior to Clemens, and in fact, wouldn’t belong in the HOF even if he never touched drugs or lied about his use, THREE times, yet.
For Clemens, his baseball life is certainly over. He didn’t change the opinions of those whose eyes are shut and the baseball owners aren’t going to buck Selig and hire him in any baseball capacity. That 10 year personal services contract with the Astros which has been, um, postponed? You think Crane is going to touch it? You think anyone is going to employ him as a pitching coach? He’s finished.
And the Hall of Fame, currently occupied only by saintly choir boys who never sinned in any way, never cheated, never cut corners, never put themselves and their own interests before the team , that Hall is closed to Clemens and pretty much everyone who has played during my own lifetime, except for the inexplicably declared pure, such as Thome, Maddux, Glavine and Junior Griffey. And the undeserving such as Jack Morris.
Ah well.
If the Hall wishes to cut off its nose to spite its face, that is its affair.
But Clemens will be a guilty man for the rest of his life in the eyes of the public because the media has declared it so.
