Roger Clemens: American Icon?

We had requested interviews with him, and he declined or ignored our requests. But there were people that we were talking to that were close to him, and so he had a sense of what was to come and what was in the book (the kind of questions we were asking, the kind of information that we were presenting to people).

The thing about Clemens is that the qualities that made him a great pitcher—his ferocity, his tenacity—there’s a thing in his DNA where he just can’t quit and he just won’t give up. His inability to sit down gets the best of him. He thought he had an opportunity to shoot some things down before they got started.

Why use the term “American Icon?”

I think that Clemens embodies a lot of things that are very American, for good or for bad. He was born in Ohio, and moved to Texas when he was a teenager. He re-invented himself in Texas. He was no longer this kid from Ohio, he became this fireballer, he embodied the “Lone Ranger” type of icon that people in the Southwest are drawn to.

Do you think that performance enhancing drugs still effect the game today as much as it did six or seven years ago?

I think that baseball has formulated a better response to it, but I don’t think you can safely say that the Steroid Era is over. There is still no test for human growth hormone.

But I think that major league baseball sees that there is a bigger picture here, we want to create a level playing field, we want to create a culture that tells people it’s not a good idea to use steroids.

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