Sunday, December 23, 2007

The Rocket - *?

Roger Clemens posted a video in defense of the Mitchell Report statements:

Link.

I have mixed feelings on the statements made about the Rocket in the Mitchell report. Clemens is a Longhorn, a former Astro, and a general fixture of Houston, the city I grew up in, not to mention I met him once (I'm pretty sure I did, at least) since his house was next to that of one of my middle school classmates growing up.

Did Clemens take steroids? I don't necessarily think it matters since the Mitchell report was comprised of "statements," not "accusations." So what this situation amounts to, as has been mentioned in the media, is a smear campaign of sort that has no impact on anything but his legacy, which is obviously important to him.

When I first saw the report, I was happily surprised to see that Alex Rodriguez wasn't present on the list. Then I thought, is A-Rod just that much of a talented freak of nature that he can be totally uninvolved in all the roid-rage and still be better than everyone else?

I'm not sure if Clemens used steroids, and no one will ever know for sure, in my opinion. But one thing that we do know for sure is that baseball over the last 15-20 years has a gigantic asterisk looming over it. It's hard to see one player singled out like Roger, but also unsurprising given his historical feats. It'll be interesting to see if he can refute the statements made against him, and what lengths he'll be willing to go through to make that happen.

If there is one thing I can say for The Rocket, it's that unlike other roid-accused peers, he never went through a phase of turning from a shrimp into a bulging giant (see Exhibit A: Barry Bonds and the gigantic head). Plus Roger was a dominating pitcher in the period of time before he supposedly started used steroids. In his case, the "right in front of your face" evidence does not stack against him like it does for others, and for what it's worth, I hope he didn't do it.

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