This Story's Getting Bigger

Don't expect any resolution of the he-said, he-said squabble between Rogers Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The way it looks is that Clemens is going to stick to his story and McNamee isn't backing down an inch. The congressmen can ask all the questions they want, but they don't have the ability to thoroughly examine evidence and make it clear which of these, ahem, gentlemen is lying his butt off here.

It may be rivetting TV, but it'll still be he-said, he-said when the smoke clears.

From McNamee's point-of-view, it's probably somewhat ominous that Andy Pettitte, Clemens' buddy, has now been excused from testifying. Pettitte has already publically corroborated McNamee's statements to some degree, and it's an intriguing question why the former trainer would lie about one player (Clemens) and tell the truth about another (Pettitte).

Remove Pettitte from the picture, however, and its just Clemens vs. McNamee, an easier fight for the pitcher.

Meanwhile, an even more damaging story may have erupted today, albeit through the disgraced John Rocker, a former major league pitcher.

Rocker says back in 2000 that he and other players, including Alex Rodriguez, were counselled by Texas Rangers management and baseball union officials on how to more effectively use steroids.

Hey, isn't that the team George Bush once owned?

Like Jose Canseco, Rocker is easy to discredit because of his checkered past. But it's a controversial angle on baseball's steroid story, one that draws a direct link between player use and possible insider knowledge in the upper levels of the game.

Of course, anyone who thought the owners, Bud Selig and the union was completely unaware of what players were injecting into their bodies has been living in a fairy tale land.

Comments

[chris]

I believe in Brian McNamee's position that Roger Clemens took steroids. But what Clemens seems to be doing is taking a page right out of the O.J. Simpson defense stragety in putting plenty of doubt in people's minds about the evidence, and in the person providing it. He's trying to make McNamee look like a big, fat liar who should go to jail for perjury. Throw in Clemens' buttering up the congressmen that are going to question him, and excuse Andy Pettitte from testifying, and it would seem Clemens' aggressive offensive might just work for him.

It will be a very sad day if McNamee ends up gettting Rocket burns from this.

And I don't need that idiot John Rocker telling me that everyone in baseball knew what was going on with PHDs and looked the other way. Everyone knew about it, except the two-faced media people in baseball (see Mike Lupica) who ignored the story for years and are far too late to spew righteous indignation about it.

[Robbie]

What does Bush having owned the Texas Rangers have anything do with Rocker? Maybe Damien thinks Clemens is from Texas so logic dictates Bush must have injected the Rocket himself. The same Bush who traded Sammy Sosa. The same Bush who has told MLB their testing program does not go far enough and warned them to improve it.

I can do without the Liberal bias that has no business in the steroid scandal.

[Steve Barnett]

Myself, I think Clemens is as guilty as the day is long..I mean how many people sit around the dinner table and go..."Oh by the way dear, I have that photo shoot tommorow do you think you can scrape up some HGH for me?..Your such a dear" And this snake oil salesman Mcnamee is no better..Selig and the slugs who run baseball are the ones who should be hauled in front of congress and grilled..There really seems to be a bad smell about all of this. Unless you can prove that one of these guys is lying then whats the point? I agree its good entertainment and all. And as much as John Rocker is a whacko I tend to belive him. And that is where this whole thing should be headed. Right to the top. Who knew what and when? And if Uncle Bud is imlicated so be it.Frankly baseball will be hard pressed to recover from this.
And Clemens and everybody elses reputation is shot now anyway.
Kind of looks good ole ego boy...

[Rick Grace]

As far as I can tell, this trial concerns American baseball players playing in American baseball league.
My question is why should we in Canada care about something that has absolutely nothing to do with us?
I mean I think the media is way more infatuated with this steroid trial then most of Canada is.

[Drew]

Hey Robbie, good post, fire off a nasty "Damian's a liberal" e-mail without even actually reading his article!! ... he said that "an even more damaging story may have ..." ... and Rocker played for the Rangers at the time, and yes indeed W did own the Rangers ... that the management of the team owned by W apparently advised players on how to effectively use steroids without being detected is an interesting story to most clear-thinking humans ... again, note by the way also that he did not say that Rocker is right or to be believed, he did say "an even more damaging story may be ..."
you obviously dislike Damian strongly and are inclined to seek out anything negative, so why not exercise your right to not read him ....

[Drew]

Rick Grace ...
sorry to burst your bubble, but Canadians do in fact play baseball ... some actually even play in that "American" league that you speak of (and at least one who was named in the Mitchell Report)... and Canadian kids watch baseball too ... do yourself a favour and read some of the stories of families who's kids started to take steroids as the answer to putting them over the edge in the highly competitive world of sport ... maybe then you would understand why society cannot ignore the issue ... I too don't like going over old news, and I do feel that many players did take steroids - not just Clemens ... but I do also feel that to ignor the issue is not a good idea either ... what if your son was on the outside looking in on a lucrative professional sports career, and decided that maybe taking some of that HGH and steroids that seems to have helped other pros would be a good idea just to put him over the edge ...
this is the real world Rick ... time to wake up ...

[chris]

Well Rick, it could be that Toronto is home to a Major League Baseball team (as well as, once upon a time ago, Montreal). And that this same Toronto baseball club was where Roger Clemens was purported to have first started using performance enhancing drugs from his old pal, Brian McNamee, who, at that time, was the Toronto club's strength and conditioning coach. Not to mention that there are plenty of Canadians playing in this American of games, baseball. One of which is Eric Gange, the 2003 Cy Young Award winner and runner up of the Lou Marsh award that year, who was named in the Mitchell Report as having taken performance enhancing drugs.

So Rick, it seems that there is more to this story that should be of interest to us Canadians than you would try and arrogantly dismiss.

[Rick Grace]

Yeah whatever.
I just think you people worship them too much.
Nobody cares about baseball in Canada anymore.
Look at all the teams that have died across the coutnry.
Look at the lousy Tv ratings.
But because its a big story in the good old USA, well its a big story up here.
Meanwhile the great acheivements of our winter elite athletes like Jeremy Witherspoon and Pierre Leuders and our skiiers get basically ingored.
The reason? Because they aren't known in the USA.
Thats the only reason I can see for guys like Steve Nash and Justin Morneau getting attention up here.
I don't know when the media up here decided their sports were ours as well, but I say its time we worried about our own back yard over foreingers.

[Tim Tubbs]

Chris is correct.There are very few,outside of southern Ontario who care much for the NFL,the NBA or even major league baseball.
We do care for the NHL and our own football league.
Sports shows on national T.V. haven't figured that out.Mind you,the bean counters of TSN and Roger's network certainly have.
They know where their audience is concentrated and they know that that audience really,really want to be considered one of the "big player" audiences in professional sports.
It galls them that the big networks ignore them and it further galls them when their teams usually finish far down in the standings.
If the NFL ever moves to Toronto,it will only be a money move.If/when southern Ontario ceases to be a money pit for the NFL,the franchaise will be moved back to the U.S.No one (outside of southern Ontario)will care or even notice.

[chris]

Well Rick, we now know what your problem is. You've wrapped yourself up in the Canadian flag so tightly that you've managed to cut the flow of oxygen to your brain, thus killing off the majority of what few cells you had up there.

This story has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING to do with it being from America. Performance enhancing drugs cuts through all sports and nationalities. All you have to do is look at Canada's own Ben Johnson to find out it's been prelavent in this country. And you would have remembered Eric Gagne, if you had BOTHERED TO READ MINE AND DREW'S POSTS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

As for your whining and crying as to why Canadians ignore Jeremy Wortherspoon and Pierre Leuders? Well, that too is not about worshiping American sports, as you think. But rather is about the obsessive coverage of HOCKEY, HOCKEY, HOCKEY that is given by all forms of media, including this blog (which, to be fair, IS Damien's job). The vast majority of people in this country eat, drink, sleep, go to the bathroom, nothing but hockey. And last I checked, hockey IS Canada's winter pastime, and certainly NOT America's. It would be fair to assume that you have no problem with that.

But hey, continue posting about why we Canadians worship all things American while we sip our double doubles from Tim Horton's. Reading about crackpot theories,such as your's, would brighten anyone's day. Or, you could find a good doctor who could recommend you have that pickle of yours surgicaly removed from whatever orifice it's lodged in.

[Rick Grace]

Hey Tubbs.
As long as its popular in Canada, I love it.
And Canada is hockey, hockey, hockey.
And don't forget curling as well.
Which our media ridicules. Yet they find baseball exciting?
And why are we getting baseball news in winter?
Why not skip the baseball coverage and give our champion atheltes more coverage?
The holier than thou Americans have been proven to be cheats and frauds.
Why is this baseball thing such a shock then?
And oh yeah. Baseball. Thats the sport that was kicked out of the OLympics right?
Funny how this rarely gets mentioned?

[chris]

Like I said Rick, your paranoia of all things not Canadian brightens our day. It must be hilarious seeing you check for Americans under your bed at night. They should make a reality series of your life for TV just so everyone can feel much better about their own lives.

So go ahead, please criticize us some more about why you are so right and we open minded folk are so wrong. We can use the laughs, Bud!