America at Large:In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I have what they like to call a "history" with Roger Clemens. The well-chronicled flare-up took place 15 summers ago, in the visiting clubhouse beneath the Metrodome in Minneapolis, writes George Kimball.
Clemens, the Boston Red Sox's star pitcher, who had just beaten the Twins with a sparkling, two-hit shutout, was inevitably mobbed by a gaggle of journalists eager for him to unburden himself of his reflections on the accomplishment. Clemens surprised his interrogators by refusing to speak to the reporters as long as one of them was me.
Rather than screw up everyone else's work day, I hastily conferred with my Boston Herald colleague, Mike Shalin, and made a battlefield decision to switch assignments, since, as I told Shalin, "this idiot isn't going to talk as long as I'm here".
That done, I headed away across the dressingroom to interview another Boston player, all but oblivious to the scene developing behind me. Spewing invective, an enraged Clemens chased after me, and when he reached the table upon which the players' post-game meal had been spread, began picking up dinner rolls, which he used to fire fastballs at my departing form.
When the first two missed, I just kept walking, but when the third struck me on the shoulder I wheeled and steeled myself for the inevitable. At that moment, I was grabbed from behind by Jack Clark, a burly first baseman, who gently dragged me away.
Tony Pena, the Boston catcher, did the same to Clemens, by now red-faced and screaming at the top of his lungs.
We never came close to exchanging blows, but the "fight" has remained such a staple of newspaper lore since that I can count on a rash of phone calls every time Roger gets himself in the soup again.
On that occasion, it became clear only once I had taken leave of the company that what had upset Clemens was something I had not said in a column I had written, but which he hadn't read.
In 1992, it should be noted, Clemens was not only a Boston icon, but the best (if also the dumbest) pitcher in the game. He had won three Cy Young Awards as the American League's best pitcher, and would finish third in that year's voting for the gong.
Since it was no secret there was no love lost between us, I was accused of having been personally motivated when, in 1996, I wrote a column essentially saying "good riddance" to Clemens' decision to jump ship in Boston in favour of a two-year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. (I wasn't alone in this view; Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette said Clemens was in "the twilight of his career".) I noted that he appeared to be a 33-year-old athlete in real decline. He had gone from a perennial 20-game winner to a pitcher who had over the past four seasons won exactly one more game (40) than he had lost (39). I also noted that while he had been the league's dominant pitcher for some years, his numbers - 192 wins, 111 losses - were not exactly Hall of Fame calibre, and that he might never reach that exalted station.
Clemens spent the next dozen years making me (and Dan Duquette) look downright silly. He won 162 more games and four more Cy Young Awards and pitched until beyond his 45th birthday.
It had long been suspected, but only with the release last week of former Senator George Mitchell's long-awaited report on steroid use in baseball did it become clear that Roger may have had lots of help. His former personal trainer, former Yankees' conditioning coach Brian McNamee, confirmed to Mitchell's investigators that, beginning in 1998, when Roger was still with the Blue Jays, he had personally and on multiple occasions injected the player with Winstrol, Deca-Durabolin and HGH (Human Growth Hormone).
If nothing else, 'roid rage might explain some of Clemens' more bizarre actions over the years - such as the time he fired the butt of Mike Piazza's broken bat at Piazza's head because he "thought it was the ball".
McNamee, it should be noted, had his reasons for being forthcoming with Mitchell. He had reached a "proffer agreement" with the federal government, in which he was promised leniency in exchange for truthful testimony.
McNamee also fingered former Clemens team-mates Andy Petitte and Lance Berkmann, both of whom subsequently acknowledged having used HGH.
Clemens' response was to deny all. Through his dim-witted agents he issued a statement in which he maintained "I did not take steroids, Human Growth Hormone, or any other banned substance at any time in my baseball career, or in fact, my entire life".
His denial may have placed him in the unenviable position of having to repeat it, under oath, before a Congressional subcommittee expected to be convened to consider the charges in Mitchell's report.
"I don't know if that was the intent of his lawyer and his agents," an unnamed baseball executive told New York Daily News' Mike Lupica, "but Roger may have danced his way all the way to Washington."
Beyond McNamee's testimony, the statistical evidence is certainly suggestive. At the least, Clemens bounced back from four years of mediocrity to enjoy a Barry Bonds-like renaissance in his late 30s. Then, in each of the past two years, in which major league players were tested for steroids, he didn't join his teams until the season was well under way. He didn't report to the Astros, who paid him $22 million, until June of 2006, and once again waited until the season was two months old before pitching for the Yankees this year (for a mere $28 million). Once the juice - one presumes - had been purged from his system, Roger won just seven games in '06 and only six this season.
Beyond the anticipated inclusion of the already-indicted Bonds, Clemens' was the biggest name to surface in Mitchell's expose.
Unlike Bonds and America's other most prominent drug cheat, Marion Jones, Clemens is of the Caucasian persuasion, and there are already charges that a double-standard may be afoot.
"Justice hasn't been meted out equally," colleague Sally Jenkins opined in the Washington Post. "That's indisputable, whether or not race had anything to do with it. Jones and Bonds face potential jail time for lying; meantime, hundreds of major leaguers stonewalled and evaded Mitchell's investigation and they get - what? Amnesty, and a mild scolding from the president."
Not quite. My Baseball Hall of Fame ballot went back last week, and, as with last year, Mark McGwire's name was not checked. In fact, last year 77 per cent of my fellow electors rejected McGwire, which was the baseball equivalent of demanding the return of Marion Jones' Olympic medals.
And while I don't have a crystal ball, I'm just guessing a similar fate awaits Bonds and Clemens when their names come up for a vote in five years, and race will have nothing to do with it. In fact, if a Hall of Fame for Assholes existed, they'd both be in it.
