rumpleforeskiin said:
Yep, don't miss Hench's report, because he's the only one. Hang your hat on it, Joe, but don't forget to take that hat down when you're walking Michael Vick's dog.
Hello Rumples,
Isn't this the same guy who practically accused Clemens of taking steroids??? HEY JOEY! If this writer is credible now...WAS HE CREDIBLE THEN???
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6871400
There must be something in Roger's water
What is the Rocket fueled by?
Vegetables? Brown rice? Rigorous jogging? As Roger Clemens returns to the mound two months shy of his 45th birthday, not only is it a fair question, but it would seem fairly irresponsible — given assumptions made about other players during the Steroid Era — not to ask it.
Long before the comical flaxseed oil alibi, leaked grand jury testimony and revelations about his hat and shoe sizes, the most damning evidence against Barry Bonds was on the back of his baseball card.
There was simply no way, we agreed, that a guy who should have been entering the steep decline phase of his career could be that much better in his late 30s and early 40s than he had been in his late 20s and early 30s without chemical enhancement.
Shouldn't Roger Clemens' baseball card elicit the same dubious eyebrow-raising? The presumption of guilt that hounded Bonds through his assault on various home run records hasn't necessarily given way to a presumption of innocence with Clemens, but rather to a sort of weary reluctance to ask
how it is possible that a major league pitcher was considerably better from ages 41-44 than he had been from ages 31-34. If Carl Lewis won the 100-meter dash in Beijing in 2008 we'd have questions, right?
During Clemens' final four years in Boston — the seasons in which he aged from 31 to 34 — the Rocket went 40-39 with a 3.77 ERA over 745 innings. In his past four seasons, when he aged 41-44, Clemens pitched 750.2 innings and went 55-27 with a 2.83 ERA.
It's one thing to stave off a decline phase, it's quite another to shave almost an entire run off of your ERA as you move into middle age.
And this brings us to an important distinction between Bonds and Clemens. Apologists for Barry will often correctly point out that he was a sure-fire Hall of Famer prior to his absurd stat (and body) inflation in San Francisco. Clemens was a lock too, but
Bonds never had a four-year stretch of sub-Hall numbers like Roger. From 1993-'96, Clemens had a record one game over .500 with an ERA just under four, which is not exactly Cooperstown-quality production. If Bonds was motivated to juice, as has been alleged, by watching Mark McGwire, a player he deemed inferior, break the single-season home run record,
imagine the motivation for Clemens after four mediocre seasons and an acrimonious departure from Boston.
As has been well-chronicled, Clemens showed up in Toronto in 1997 — after claiming he wanted to be closer to his family in Texas — in the best shape of his life and turned in back-to-back Cy Young seasons, going 41-13 with a 2.33 ERA.
The statistical disparity between the Rocket's last four years in Boston and the following two seasons in Toronto was as dramatic as the spike Bonds experienced after McGwire broke the home run record. But all we heard was that Clemens was such a fitness madman that sometimes he'd go for a jog after his starts.
When then-Red Sox GM Dan Duquette had famously concluded after the '96 season that Clemens was entering the "twilight" of his career, he had a century of baseball evidence to support his assertion.
Given that no subsequent 300-game winner since Mickey Welch (1890-'93) had won fewer games between the ages of 31 and 34 than Clemens, it seemed highly improbable that the Rocket would win 108 more games after leaving Boston. He's won 156 and counting.
Along the way he's also drilled Mike Piazza in the head and thrown a shattered bat in his direction during a World Series game, a transgression for which he blamed the clubhouse coffee. Too much java. Right.
Now Clemens will move into a locker room with Jason Giambi.
Giambi, perhaps the most forthright player this side of Jose Canseco from the Steroid Era, is still being dogged by the fallout from his semi-admissions and oblique apologies. By trying to come clean, Giambi has become something of a sympathetic figure and also a reluctant spokesperson for his fellow, lips-sealed transgressors.
As the Yankees' season of discontent unfolds, once-impertinent questions now seem all-too pertinent. But will anyone ask them of Clemens? After his most recent minor league tuneup, Clemens snapped at a reporter who appeared to have asked a fairly innocuous question about the warm reception he'd been receiving from the minor league crowds.
The Rocket went on a long harangue about negativity before concluding, "I'm positive and I've always been positive."
Gee, imagine if the reporter had asked him a tough question. Like the one that no one dares ask.
