Roger Clemens: American Icon?

Recently, I caught up with Michael O’Keeffe, one of the authors of American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime. The book hit stores on May 12.

This was the second book on Roger Clemens to come out in the past few months, following the release of The Rocket That Fell To Earth by Jeff Pearlman. My questions are in bold, and his answers are underneath:

What was the purpose of the book? How did the project start?

We had been covering the steroid issue in major league baseball and other sports for a long time, close to ten years. When the Mitchell Report came out, Roger Clemens made a lot of denials about steroid use.

He went on 60 Minutes, made a YouTube video, and filed a defamation lawsuit. We followed the story. And at some point last year, we thought that we had a lot of information.

It was difficult to tell these long narrative stories in the newspaper, so we thought we could put this together and tell a good story, both about how Roger Clemens went from being a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame to the target of a perjury investigation, and also about the rise of steroids in major league baseball.

Is the book more of a narrative, or is it investigative?

I think it’s both. We tell a story, but we also lay out facts that people may not have been aware of before.

Clemens has stated time and time again that he has never done drugs. In fact, he said that American Icon was “one big fat lie.” Why is he so quick to defend himself against the evidence, if he is indeed guilty?

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