Clemens cooking

After a few hours worth of testimony to the grand jury along with accuser/former trainer Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens' public image is not looking very hot. He's cooking, but not in the good way. One could even say his pants are literally on fire. It would explain why he came off as nervous when being grilled about his accused use of Human Growth Hormone and steroids.

And his death-stares and McNamee were so chilling one could have thought that somebody's — either Clemens or McNamee — head would explode from the sheer force being exerted in that look.

But the all-time word of the hearing had to "misremember." It could be used in a sentence like: "Andy Pettitte misremembers some things." Hilarious. It might even be construed as smack-talking since Clemens may be updating his Christmas card list when you consider that Pettitte's under-oath claims that Clemens admitted to him that he used HGH are VERY damning.

There isn't much known for 100% truth in the situation still but if there's one thing that we do now know, it's that somebody may be going to prison. All of these depositions were under-oath in a court and, as we know from the Barry Bonds indictment on perjury, you cannot tell a lie to the government without them getting their retribution. The U.S. government do not like looking like fools, despite who their leader is.

The Mitchell Report

It's been analyzed everywhere by everyone who could possibly write about it. I, for one, am not really up for reading 40-plus pages of stuff when I could get the summary everywhere I looked yesterday. People are damning every player, trainer, official etc. that was named in report. That's fair. But should everyone be THIS up at arms over the Mitchell report? I don't think so. I wasn't too shocked about any single name on the list.

The only name close to shocking me is Roger Clemens, a personal hero in fact. But the speculation had already been thrown around before. The old conspiracy theory that Clemens started his ritualistic taking-a-few-months-off thing was actually a secret suspension from the league — trying to cover the ass of one of their greatest players ever. This will tarnish his legacy a la Barry Bonds but Clemens isn't an ass to the public like Bonds is most of the time. How this will play out, we'll see...

One thing I do know for certain is that for a guy on some sort of juice, Gregg Zaun should have a lot better numbers.

I've got the feeling that, while this will hurt the game, some of its' best players and the record books, this is not as bad as people think it is. Even in the last few years, every major North American sport (except the impeccable NFL) has suffered a far worse blow. The NHL lockout, the NBA referee scandal and even WWE's Chris Benoit tragedy are far more crippling than this. The thing is that everyone already suspected a lot of the players named. The confirmation isn't nearly as jarring as the initial accusations to me.

And who would've ever thought that Jose Canseco would come out of all this looking like a good guy? He arguably started this whole snowball effect and could, in a way, be credited with cleaning up the sport now. How delicious is that irony?

Schilling opens huge trap again

Curt Schilling opened his big, opinionated mouth again and of course people listened. Why? Because the entire Red Sox nation loves this guy, meaning the rest of baseball fans don't really care for him. Also, he comes off as a trouble starter for always speaking out and should know better to do so with the wisdom he should theoretically have under his belt at his age.

Anyways, he called out Bonds and McGwire for not denying the performance enhancing drug allegations and for not suing anyone who made that claim. This is based on the fact that Curt would have sued if he had been accused. Seems kind of wussy doesn't it?

Cooperstown Joke

Baseball’s Hall of Fame voting, the worst process since the one that put Bush in power.

This year two men who are overwhelmingly qualified for Hall of Fame status didn’t receive the entire 100% of votes. While Associated Press writers who have reached a status deeming them “worthy” of voting for inclusion to Cooperstown, those who didn’t pencil in Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripkin Jr. should lose their right.

One writer, Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown, turned in a blank ballot. His claim was that no one from baseball’s “steroids era” should be allowed in the hall. So players in baseball from roughly 1993-2004 will now have no chance to be inducted unanimously, even though a player like Ripkin, who played in 2632 straight games to set a seemingly unbreakable iron-man record, clearly deserves the honor.

The only thing that Tony Gwynn ever did was capture eight batting titles, five gold gloves and played in 16 all-star games. I would like to know how a man on steroids can have a career high of 17 home runs.

I could understand how a voter could leave Mark McGwire off their ballot considering the turmoil he’s surrounded in. But 23.5% of voters looked past his character issues (namely his ties to the steroid scandal) towards his numbers and the sheer dominance he had on the game during his chase for the single season home run record. McGwire is ranked seventh in career home runs and is only one of 20 players to have hit 500 long balls. Apparently, no one remembers how Big Mac started getting people to care about baseball again after the disastrous strike.

Shouldn’t Cooperstown be about recognizing the best players to ever play? Why should a player who participated during a certain time period be penalized because of it? And if most players were (allegedly) on steroids and other performance enhancers at this time, then weren’t McGwire’s statistics comparable to his peers? Was he still not one of the best in his era?

Hopefully one day, a better system will be put in place to vote for who is worthy of hall contention. Hopefully one day, McGwire will be enshrined in Cooperstown. Maybe one day the controversy with Big Red will be which team’s hat he will wear on his plaque.

The sad thing is, this isn’t even the biggest disappointment related to the Baseball Hall of Fame; Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, may never be enshrined. But that’s for another time.