Jeff Pearlman interviews Tom Verducci

http://www.jeffpearlman.com/the-quaz-qa-tom-verducci/

 

Seriously how do you do an interview with Tom Verducci and not ask him if he felt duped by Roger Clemens. You have to wonder if Verducci made it a pre condition of interview not to ask him about Clemens.

I know Jeff follows SJ from time to time so perhaps he will provide the answer.

 

Given their SI connection, probably professional courtesy, which stains this whole interview.

 

I thought the interview was quite good and very interesting. It is worth a read and provides plenty of things to consider in doing the job.

 

These are two writers I really really enjoy reading. But when I got to the part about PEDs... when T.V. starts calling other people excuse-makers, my stomach started to get queasy.

I don't think I can get thru this whole thing.

 

Just to refresh everyone's memory:

From 2001 Verducci SI article on Clemens:

Clemens has introduced Pettitte, a fellow Texan, to his famously grueling conditioning program. (Lefthander Pettitte, who relied on 89-mph sinkers and cutters, now can fire 94-mph four-seam fastballs past hitters.) Clemens also let rookie lefties Randy Keisler and Ted Lilly join him during a workout in Baltimore in July. Lilly grew dizzy and nearly passed out, and Keisler vomited. "Or maybe it was the other way around," Clemens says, laughing.

Throughout almost 18 major league seasons (the first 13 with the Red Sox and the next two with the Toronto Blue Jays), Clemens has been a fitness fanatic. He so refined his training sessions with Blue Jays strength coach Brian McNamee that Toronto catcher Darrin Fletcher nicknamed them "Navy SEAL workouts." Clemens won his fourth and record fifth Cy Young Awards with the Blue Jays and then was traded to New York following the 1998 season for lefthander David Wells, lefty setup man Graeme Lloyd and second baseman Homer Bush. After Clemens slipped to 14-10 with the Yankees in 1999, New York hired McNamee as its assistant strength coach. From July 2, 2000 (when Clemens returned to action after straining his right groin muscle), through Sunday, he'd gone 27-3 over 46 starts.

Between outings Clemens religiously adheres to McNamee's tightly choreographed program of distance running, agility drills, weight training, 600 daily abdominal crunches and assorted other tortures. "One time he wanted me to ride a stationary bike, and I told him I never thought it gave you much of a workout," Clemens says. "He told me, 'Give me 17 minutes.' After 17 minutes I thought my legs would explode."

Clemens takes great pride in having stopped his baseball biological clock. He will tell you that he still runs three miles in 19 to 20 1/2 minutes, that he still weighs 232 pounds, that he still wears slacks with a 36-inch waist (though they must be tailored to allow for his massive thighs) and that he can still reach for a mid-90s fastball at will -- the same specs he had at least 10 years ago. "He's a freak of nature, the kind of pitcher who comes along once in a generation, maybe every 25 to 30 years," says Devil Rays pitching coach Bill Fischer, Clemens's pitching coach from 1985 to '91 in Boston. "He's like Tom Seaver or Nolan Ryan. At 39 the s.o.b. is as good as when I had him. To go 18-1, I don't care if you're pitching for God's All-America team, that's mighty hard to do. He can pitch as long as he wants."

There's another benefit to the maniacal training besides staying fit. Clemens says all that sweat equity gives him a high comfort level when he takes the mound. How prepared is he? Through Sunday he had not permitted a first-inning earned run in 21 of his 28 starts. "I know I've done everything I could to be ready for that fifth day," he says

 

In the Q&A, Verducci mentions he was telling people at SI to get on the PED story in the early 2000s.

I was one of the (fortunate? unfortunate?) folks who briefly worked on the launch of CNN/SI... I was working at CNN at the time. That little "synergistic experiment" happened in the late 90s. Like '97 or '98. There were managers and editors brought over from SI to work on CNN/SI. I remember meetings with SI people and conference calls with SI reporters where steroids were being discussed. There were people on both the print and TV side pushing to do stories on steroids.

So if Verducci says he was sticking his neck out to do steroid stories circa 2001, he was about 3-4 years behind a lot of other people.

Just keepin' it real, folks!

 

So Verducci was on top of PED's in 2001 but yet he is still not questioning Roger Clemens in 2003. From his 2003 SI cover story on Clemens:

"What's inside a man who turns 41 in two months and who after more than 60,000 pitches still can throw a baseball with a ferocity that even 95 mph fails pitifully to measure? What's inside the greatest pitcher alive? Blasphemy be damned: Maybe his career has been better than those of the dead, too—the communion of diamond saints who never knew integration or the shock-and-awe slugging of today's players."

Now we know the rest of the story of what was inside the Rocket.

 

I was hoping Pearlman would ask about the signature "Verducci graf" - when he drops in a dozen or more numbers in a single paragraph to back up he's saying.

 

Clearly no self-esteem issues.

 

Come on Jeff. I know you follow SJ. Did you have a per-agreement with Verducci not to talk about Clemens?