Grimsley names Clemens

If Clemens doesn't get exactly the same amount of heat that Bonds has gotten, then Whitlock's right. QED.

 

Dead on Fenian - just look at the work of Tom Verducci on the 2 parties - messieurs Clemens and Bonds.

 

Re: Clemens, Pettitte, Tejeda named in Grimsley affidavit

I have assumed for about 5-6 years that Clemens is juiced. Everything about him meets the profile: big, muscled guy who is an absolute workout fanatic with an amazing ability to recover from workouts even when well on the high side of 35, plus a power pitcher more than anything.

Notice in his quotes today about how he dances around the issue, saying stuff like how "dangerous" it is for this report to come out instead of emphasizing that this is a flat-out lie, which he really doesn't do. Yeah, dangerous for him and his reputation and cred.

Listen, Clemens has always been one of my favorite pitchers, and he's a great one. But a little TOO great perhaps?

One more thing about 'roids---I"m still mystified why more still isn't being said about Sammy Sosa. Moreso than Bonds, McGwire, Palmeiro, whomever, it's always been obvious to me that Sosa has always been the poster child for steroid and/or HGH abuse---he is an absolute cartoon caricature in terms of the before and after photos. In that regard, Sosa has those other three beaten by a mile. He's a FREAK. But Sosa just seems to skate without much blame. This is ridiculous.

 

I'd be a lot more likely to believe any of your bullcrap if you ever had any hard proof to offer. You know, that thing most journalists use to back up their claims.

It is complete bullshit that because sportswriters dropped their pants and the ball on this story since 1998 that their current tack is to claim proof is no longer needed.

If you are such a hotshit investigator, Ragump, then you should have uncovered lots of proof by now. Let's have it, Sherlock.

 

You're kidding, right? There has been PLENTY of pixels spilled on fingering Sosa (ewww) as a roider. Never a doubt.

Well, except by redswriter, who is probably aghast at this development.

 

redswriter is probably working on a book about the summer that saved baseball.

 

Not only that but I think the fact that he's not in the league, that no team is willing to touch him given the circumstances and his performance the past couple years, there's not too much of a need to go after Sosa these days. Clemens is another matter, though, especially with the money that might be thrown his way by the Red Sox, Yankees, Astros or the Rangers next season.

 

I am just surprised that it took so long for someone to come up with Brian Mcnamee as the "redacted" trainer.

Anyone paying attention around Yankee clubhouse knew. The Yankees fired the guy because of an "incident " in Tampa. After Clemens kept him on personal payroll.

The day Grimsley story broke I had Mcnamee name up here on SJ. With all that the NY media writes that is not even close to being substantiated one has to wonder how the LA Times beat them .

 

Oh. When you said quite definitively that hundreds of players use HGH and other performance-enhancing drugs, I thought you meant you knew what you were talking about.

My bad.

 

You will see more Sosa stuff come out in the near future. I hear that a Farinu-Wada/Williams-type story is being worked on about him as I type this (though not by my paper, I'd add).

What needs to happen now is some newspaper, be it the NYT, the Houston Chronicle, the LAT, the Daily News, whatever, needs to call out some of their biggest and best guns, and look under Clemens mattresses and in his crawl space, metaphorically speaking. Otherwise, Clemens won't come under the same kind of scrutiny that Bonds did, not because he's white and Bonds is black, but because there won't be a mountain of evidence to drive the story to the next day, and then the next. The Bonds story got so big because it was sort of the perfect storm: You had an extremely divisive athlete chasing the sexiest record in sports, a federal investigation with all kinds of leaked grand jury testimony, a number of people who hated Bonds and were willing to spill his dirty laundry, and the constant 24-hour promotion of the story by a sports network with questionable ethics that was desperate to make money off Bonds. Lastly, yes, I'll agree with Whitlock, the race angle adds even more intrigue. But I'd argue the race angle is kind of like adding a pinch of salt to boiling pot of hearty ingredients, the final touch in an already complex recipe.

With Clemens, all you have right now is a muscled-up fat guy who used to be skinny, and who also happens to be better at his age than just about any pitcher in the history of baseball. He got branded a cheater and drug user by a no-name reliever who, it just so happens, may have been trying to escape federal prison by ratting out his friends.

Personally, I think Clemens probably deserves the same scrutiny that Bonds has received. I think they both cheated, and are both assholes. But the evidence right now is not the same. And to pretend otherwise, and suggest it's all about race, is disingenuous.