Roger Clemens Fallout: Steroid Controversy Out of Control

The steroid controversy surrounding Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, former trainer Brian McNamee and others has spiraled way out of control.

Originally, there was "The Mitchell Report." The report to the commissioner of an investigation into the illegal use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances by players in Major Lleague Baseball.

 

Everyone had something to say about it. Some of them had even read it. Or, you know, some of it. That was almost two months ago.

At the time, Roger Clemens said he was "...shocked, SHOCKED," to find that his name was going on in there. He said that he had no idea that he was under investigation until the report was issued. Clemens said he would have spoken to the Mitchell investigators if they had let him know he was going to be named. Well, that was a load of crap. 

Last week it came to light that Brian McNamee had tried to warn both Pettitte and Clemens that they were going to be named in the Mitchell Report, and he had been the one to finger them, even though federal investigators had warned McNamee not to talk to anyone before the report came out.

 

McNamee spoke to one of Clemens' many lawyers, and Clemens even heard a taped recording of the conversation as much as a week before the Mitchell Report was released.

 

Now, Clemens says, he never spoke to the Mitchell people because he didn't think they'd want to talk to him. These are the same people, it should be noted, who had repeatedly tried to get in touch with Clemens while they were researching the report just like they had everyone else who might have had any tied to steroids. So that, too, is a load of crap.

In the last two months, Roger Clemens has tried just about everything to deal with this situation, short of taking any actual responsibility and/or telling the truth. He's tried...

 

 

 

This tactic rarely works, even when it's appropriate. It didn't work for the Hollywood Ten, half a century ago, when the Red Scare had everyone hunting for Communists under their couch cushions. It didn't work 35 years ago, when Richard Nixon and some of his top aides were found to be complicit in the burglary of their political opposition's headquarters. It didn't work 14 years ago, when both sides of the pending MLB strike kept insisting that the other side was already getting too much of the profits, and should not be entitled to any more than that. It didn't work a decade ago, when President Clinton told us that he "...did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now.

 

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