Today in The Journal News
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Feb 19, 2008 
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Andy Pettitte apologized for using HGH but defended his actions.
Now that he’s in camp, Pettitte should catch up quickly. This notebook also catches up with Andrew Brackman.
Just getting back to work after a three-day weekend? You lazy dog, we were still writing down here in Tampa. So flip back and read the weekend coverage.
Position players report today. Back a little later with a report on who is in the house. The first full-squad workout is tomorrow.
Why doesn’t the Daily News just come clean and put Emery on the payroll?
http://www.nydailynews.com/spo....._roge.html
Thanks Pete, have a great day. Could someone please write out the link to Pete’s notebook. Thanks
Whatevered
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.....74/RSS0901
Thanks John, Have a great day.
Pete:
Is Brackman wearing number 747 ?
murphydog -
I’m happy all I have is the Star Ledger in the morning. It’s not nearly as comprehensive in coverage as the Daily News, but at least it doesn’t give me agita for breakfast!
I followed your link and read that unfortunate story. So much for an uneventful baseball season for the Yankees. But then I followed another link to a story by Denis (one “n”?) Hamill. Ugh.
Tino will be on 1050 in about 15 minutes.
Lupica at it again
“Pettitte admits he knew he was going to be in the Mitchell Report before the report came out, even though he now has this rather amazing difficulty remembering exactly when he found out.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/spo....._pett.html
Um that isn’t what Pettitte said, he said McNamee called him to tell him he spoke about Andy. No one knew if his name would appear in the actual report. And Maybe he doesn’t recall when he found out because on top of all this his father is sick, his son was very serously injured in an accident.
Also people who haven’t followed Andy keep critizing him talking about religion. Those who have followed him for years know this isn’t an act. The person that we saw yesterday is the real Andy Pettitte.
Jennifer- Can you please tell us what Tino says. Thanks
He didn’t really say much of anything. Andy was a great teamate. McNamee was there really for Roger, but if you needed help in the weight room he was there. Espn usually posts it on line if you want to hear it later.
Also the two idiots in the morning, keep playing a clip they don’t even know what the question was that prompted the answer. I just emailed them asking them why they don’t know the question, or why their flunkies don’t know the question.
I don’t get why Pete and alot of Media are not taking Andy at his word. I for one belive Andy, albeit I would say he was more stupid than being a cheater. He got bad advice probably from Clemens and took it. I think Andy remembered not misremembered!
jennifer, what was the last part of that? two idiots keep playing a sound clip?
From Sweeney’s blog
A quick check of the Yankees Spring Training Roster shows me that there are only two players here born in the ‘60’s. Mike Mussina was born in 1968 and Mariano Rivera was born in 1969. While watching some of the young catchers take batting practice, I glanced down to find that Austin Romine was born in 1988 and Jesus Montero was born in 1989. This is scary stuff to me. I’m not an old fart by any means (I’m 37), but I quickly realized that many of the high school players drafted this coming summer will be guys born in 1990!! I mean, we’re talking about kids whose idea of classic rock is Green Day.
http://www.wfan.com/Sweeny-Blo.....ic/1676027
Damn that is scary!!
Honestly, I think this thing begins to die down now.
Once the full team reports, talk will be about baseball.
The Daily News will continue to be Richard Emery’s mouthpiece. They see this as an opportunity to gain some traction in their battle with the Post. They may end up being a lone ranger reporting this story.
Aside from that, NOBODY on the Yankees is going to be talking about it. Hard to just rehash the same thing everyday without new news. Folks just turn the page and stop reading your paper if you go that route.
A distraction? Not a chance.
As Pete said earlier, players don’t get caught up with this stuff. They just go about their jobs.
Pettitte will fine and life will go on.
I guess I do not need to be reminded why I cannot stand Lupica. Why do they let this guy have a word processor? I guess he just cuts and pastes his sanctimonious pap.
Turntwo, they keep playing a clip of him saying that anyone who sees what ‘I’ and Roger have been thru better stop. Not the exact words, but you should get the jist of which statement it is. They didn’t know the question was do you think baseball is clean now. (something along those lines).
from pettitte’s press conference:
“Mac has pushed me in my workouts harder than anyone I’ve ever worked with. I have been friends with Roger and Mac for a long time and, hopefully, will continue to be friends after this.”
like i said last night on the blog, andy continues to plod on in a childlike naiveness.
the reality is “mac” is almost certainly a rapist. several witnesses saw him in the act. notice they didn’t say mcnamee told them he did it . they saw him. in front of congress, mcnamee admitted that he totally lied to the police who said he was the prime suspect in the rape charge.
andy also got his hgh in his hometown from father who got it from his wife’s brother’s wife’s brother who is kelly blair who got his steroids and hgh from a dealer at kelly blair’s gym who is at the moment indicted for murder.
for someone who is so honest and pure, andy sure is close to some very bad people. i don’t think andy pettitte would have anything to do with rape and murder,but i don’t think he makes good judgements about his connections to people who are involved in these things.
i understand him being fooled by mcnamee about the rape charges before everything had come to light, but with all that the world knows now , how does he continue to support mcnamee as a good friend? i guess it is possible that pettitte doesn’t know mcnamee admitted lying in the rape case because pettitte says he didn’t watch the hearings.
well that’s just great andy. don’t watch, don’t learn anything. be uninformed. just affect other people’s lives by giving support for a likely rapist and admitted steroid dealer because you don’t take the time to watch.
i’m sorry,but the best i can give pettitte is that he’s childlike in his view of this whole situation. he acts more like a 6 year old who’s caught stealing cookies from his mom’s kitchen than an adult whose words affect other people’s lives.
no one should be friend’s with mcnamee. the guy is a very bad guy. andy’s support for him borders on the ridiculous. ironically this support of mcnamee that plays well in the court of public opinion is going to force pettitte into a real court of law because that is the one place where his childlike answers and evaluations of people are not going to fly.
as far as baseball goes, andy should be fine. they “play” baseball so in his childlike way he’s in a world that he can understand.
SJ44 -
If this is the last of it, then, no, I don’t think the team will have a lot of distractions with regard to this particular situation. However, I think that Andy Pettitte will still have to deal with any fall-out as it affects his children. He spoke about it himself yesterday, that one of the more difficult things he had to do was to talk to his children about this situation, tell them their dad made a mistake. But those children of his have to go to school, and I can only hope that they live in a sympathetic community and that the other children there are a little less cruel than many can be. There certainly will be calls from home, I’m sure, and while I have no doubt Pettitte can withstand the name-calling, etc., that’s going to visit upon him at each stop this season, I believe it will hurt him if his children have to deal with that.
However, he’s pitched through personal adversity before, and so one can hope he can pitch through it again.
Now, if the Clemens case does progress to where Pettitte is required to be a witness and required to give depositions, I guess we can only hope that those appearances, whether they be in Court in a law office, can be arranged around his (the Yankees) schedule. But at some point, it certainly could interfere. And if he has to miss a turn in the rotation here and there, well, I’m sure the Yankees will have contingency plans. After all, they’d have to deal with injury or illness. I’d just hope that whatever the situation brings that it is as physically inobtrusive as possible for the Yankees.
I think you are right SJ. If anything this will pull the Yanks even tighter together as a team. The daily news isn’t even worth being fish wrap.
It would be nice to just focus on baseball but the media just loves to focus on the Yankees, especially when it is a negative. Yesterday both Eric Gagne and Paul LoDuca held press conferences at their respective training camps to apologize for their PED use as named in the Mitchell report. Funny but I missed those press conferences on ESPN!
Yeah I missed it too. Funny how they happened to pick the same day as Andy.
yeah, dont think that Eric Gagne and Paul Lo Duca didnt calculate that perfectly. they knew exactly what they were doing.
Jennifer – You mentioned earlier that Tino was on ESPN radio. I just put on WFAN and they mentioned that Tino was on there earlier to promote a youth program and ended up hanging up on them. Something related to the steroid issue. Did anybody else here that interview this morning.
Fran, really wow! Tino’s converstaion with M&M started talking about his youth program. Than they asked him about Pettitte. Didn’t get too deep in the hgh alligations. I donwer if they will post the audio.
I’m cancelling my subscription to the News that article by Hamill was a disgrace. Goodbye Daily News how low can you go?
Tino was on with Boomer and Carton this morning but I got to work before he came on. If he hung up on Carton I wouldn’t be surprised, the guy is a pain the in rear.
Doreen:
Lupica is running on fumes. All he does now apparently is take faxes or e-mails from Emery and cut and paste them into a column.
As for Hamil’s story, and I won’t link that garbage here, it’s amazing what a complete fraud he is. It’s a story that’s 13 years old, about whether or not rookie Andy Pettitte refused to give some NYC cop’s kid an autograph. I’m sure the fact that the kid’s grandfather was a Daily News employee had nothing to do with the story even making it into the sports pages in the first place. If it happened to your kids or mine, it’s not news.
I have worked with cops for a long time. Most of them are good folks, and one remains my oldest and dearest friend as we both get on with our second careers. But some of them are about as low a form of life as you can imagine. I’m as sure as I am sitting here that the “decorated” cop in Hamil’s story was more upset that someone turned him down for a freebie than anything else. (“This guy Pettitte thinks who he is.”)
Talk about purple prose, how’s this gem from Hamil in today’s column: “Pettitte admitted that he shot drugs provided to him by his retired police officer father, which makes him the son of a mutt, from a family of cheats and liars.” Really, Denis? Really?
Just proves what a vindictive, grudge holding piece of excrement Hamil is, laying in wait for 13 years just to get back at Pettitte for a perceived slight and then taking a gratuitous swing at him for speaking publicly about the fact that he’s a practicing Christian. (The key word is “practicing.” It takes a lifetime of practice to get it right). I don’t ever remember Pettitte pronouncing judgment on anyone or anything, or trying to impose his views on anyone, all of which Hamil does in today’s column, all over the fact that some retired cop’s kid didn’t get an autograph. It speaks for itself.
If anything, Hamil ought to be thanking Pettitte to this day for helping to make Hamil’s name in the business over that ridiculous incident.
It’s a tough City.
Let’s remember why the Gagnes and Lo Ducas of the world are secondary stories. It is because, unlike Roger Clemens, they have kept a low profile and have (implicitly) concurred with the Mitchell Report.
Clemens, and his lawyers, have bombastically attacked or impugned countless people in their O.J.-like search for The Truth. Clemens, and his lawyers, have made this a story. They have pushed the issue on a multitude of fronts. Andy Pettite could have easily been a PED sidebar (like Lo Duce & Gagne) if Clemens hadn’t dragged him down (along with McNamee, Clemens’ wife, Clemens’ agents, Clemens’ nanny, Clemens’ lawyers, Knoblauch, etc.).
Put the blame where it belongs. As Caesar said as he crossed the Rubicon, “The die is cast.” It was Roger Clemens who cast this die, and made a lot of unwilling people players in his little game of chance.
So don’t blame the media, or Yankee hatred, or even George Mitchell for the current state of affairs. Clemens deliberatley created an untenable situation for almost everyone in his entourage.
But, after all, he did pitch for Team USA ….. I guess we owe him that.
Carton is a big Met fan and was gleeful last week about the so-called ‘crumbling’ of the Yankee empire. He also predicted the Giants to lose every week during the playoffs. What a pleasure it was to see him eat crow.
Artie A:
I think Pete is taking Andy at his word. It’s just that there are some plainly self-serving parts of Andy’s story and calling Andy on that seems like fair comment.
Murphydog:
Where was that pubbed, I did not see it.
Brian:
Is there a good reason for a sox fan to be posting on a Yankee blog?
Mike Lupica is a clown. What a waste.
Carton is a disgusting person. He said something so inapporiate last week. Stern would have been fined for it. I wrote a email to them complaining about it. Do you think I’ve heard back? No. I’ve stopped listening to their “show” because of it.
http://www.nydailynews.com/spo.....tml?page=1
as bad as the daily news may be, this article from them gives the seamy side of where pettitte got his hgh.
i have no problem with andy pettite shutting up and just playing baseball. i have a problem with him continuing to bury clemens with “good old mac” crap. if pettite can’t get precise with his words and realize the implications of what he says, he really needs to just not talk about this situation.
if the yankees really want to move on with no chance of anything popping up when they least expect it, they need to remove anyone who was connected to mcnamee when he
was with the yankees. there was likely a cover up of the rape case that involved yankee other yankee players(knoblach) and a yankee official who has not been named. hopefully he’s gone from the organization. hopefully cashman knows nothing about it,but how is that possible if he was in charge then?
without being able to read the future and what new info zealous reporters and federal investigators will be digging up, cleaning house of any mcnamee connections might not be such a bad idea. taking up pettittes’s offer to have his contract dismissed might not be such a bad idea. as much as i like pettitte as a player i would not mind moving on from this saga. the yankees would survive life without pettitte.
i know it’ll blow over sooner if pettitte quits adding fuel to the fire with irresponsible comments about his good buddy mcnamee.
Carton is still talking about his interview with Tino. From what I can gather, Carton said to Tino that since he was in the locker room when “steroid abuse was rampant on the Yankees in 2000, how do we know that you are clean and did not do steroids.”
murphydog –
I’m familiar with the type. (People who think they are more deserving of favor because of “who they are” are what they do.) People who hold 13-year-old grudges over a perceived slight are usually pretty small.
I would point out to those chastising Pettitte for falling back on his religion that just because a person is Christian does not mean a person is infallible. Human beings make mistakes. His faith helps him get through his mistakes. I don’t think that’s a crime. And as far as I know, he hasn’t forced his faith on anyone else.
is this the Carton that i used to put up with when i would listen to 101.5 for afternoon traffic reports when i commuted? how did he get a job talking sports?
The Tino interview is up on wfan.com is you want to listen.
Tino got his plug in, got tired of answering steroid questions, said he would take a lie detector to prove he was clean, thanked them and said gotta go now.
Not a big deal.
Jen–Talking about the young guys?
I was born in 1986, and y’all consider me the baby of the blog!
Brian (Red Sox fan):
If Mitchell had the guts, work ethic or integrity of John Dowd, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
http://www.dowdreport.com/
Dowd did such a thorough job that Pete Rose had no choice but to capitulate. That was a service to Baseball, its fans and in a strange way to Rose himself because it saved him from a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful campaign of denial. Mitchell on the other hand turned in a half-assed piece of dreck that scapegoated Clemens, yet left him enough wiggle room to mount his present defense.
Truthfully, I cannot help but fly under a pirate flag and root for Clemens. I hope he gives Mitchell, Selig and Fehr, along with the owners and the TV and Cable magnates, a little pay back. They richly deserve it for their hypocrisy, for cashing in on the bad behavior and now retroactively seeking to punish it with Draconian ferocity, all the while retaining their ill-gotten gains and claiming absolution.
saucY – Yep it is. After Imus got fired he got the morning show job with Boomer Esiason. Usually I listen to them when I’m driving into work because there isn’t much on in the mornings. Boomer is pretty good but Carton is EXTREMELY annoying, especially when he talks about the Yankees. I didn’t catch the Tino interview but earlier in the morning he was saying that Torre should be held accountable for the steroid use by Yankees that he coached.
I feel old now. I was born in 1983. Time does fly.
Bronx Born — I’ve posted here before, especially on matters which are of interest to both Yankee and Red Sox fans. I’ve attempted to avoid being abrasive, insulting, or, if you will, a “bad guest.”
Clemens has become a focal point of the PED crisis, and I have some insight on Clemens background and history (from many years of following him in Boston).
You needn’t be so proprietary about a public blog. I’m fully aware of all of the arguments rergarding me being on “your” blog ….. but I feel that the opportunity for meaningful dialog and byplay with less myopic Yankee fans is worth the occasional criticism.
Bronx Born:
Mr. Hamill peddles his wares at the Daily News. The offending piece is in today’s edition under the title: Pettitte has never been class act.
What a jack he is. I don’t blame Tino for hanging up. Good for him. He doesn’t need to take that garbage from that no name jerk.
“So don’t blame the media, or Yankee hatred, or even George Mitchell for the current state of affairs. Clemens deliberatley created an untenable situation for almost everyone in his entourage.
But, after all, he did pitch for Team USA ….. I guess we owe him that.”
Spoken just like a Red Sox fan. The Yankees are obviously the biggest story in baseball regardless of what you jaded Sox fans might like to think. Anything that happens with the Yankees will be blown out of proportion by the media simply because it’s the Yankees.
brian( red sox fan)
you are aware that without clemens being named the mitchell report lacked star power. you are aware that knoblach and pettitte were not big enough names to get mcnamee immunity from prosecution for years of steroid dealing to many customers not involved with baseball.
without judging whether clemens is telling the whole truth or not, there was a lot of incentive for the mitchell report to be inaccurate and for mcnamee to lie.
the feds are being investigated by the california judicial system for over zealous investigatory methods. don’t be so sure some of them don’t end up with the same fate as the duke prosecutor.
i know you dislike clemens personally which affects your judgement. i never really liked clemens, but i had and have a great respect for him as a pitcher. it is possible he’s just dabbled in hgh and is being railroaded by the feds, mcnamee, and mitchell, the red sox executive.
neither you nor i know for sure what clemens did or did not do. this is going to take a trial to get closer to the truth. because of how long and drawn out this is likely to be, i’d personally rather the yankees cut pettitte loose and move on.
let mitchell have his way and hit back where it hurts- on the field.
I don’t always agree with Brian (Red Sox fan), but I defend to the death his right to be here, provided he continues to take it as well as dish it out, and adheres to the blog’s User Policy. What more can you really ask?
Brian (Red Sox fan) seems a lot more troll-like recently.
and by his logic (taking a knee to end a game), the Giants blew out the Patriots in the Superbowl…
Brian (red sox fan),
I agree with most of what you said in your initial post about Clemens. He does hold a lot of blame for the situation he and Pettitte are in. However, I do think some of the coverage he gets is fueled by the fact that he is Roger Clemens and he is a Yankee. Looking back at the Mitchell report, the evidence against Clemens, Pettitte and Knoblauch was extremely weak compared to the other players mentioned in the report so I can see why Roger reacted like he did. He was obviously trying to protect his legacy and I can see why he is angry about being “convicted” with basically no evidence against him. Obviously, since that time more evidence has been brought to light but I do think it is unfair how much coverage he gets.
But this isn’t a new thing, the Yankees and Red Sox get by far the most coverage of any teams in baseball. Obviously a hall of fame player who played for both will get tons of coverage when implicated in the biggest controversy the sport has seen in decades.
Brian–the majority of us enjoy your posts, even if we don’t your allegiance
“Truthfully, I cannot help but fly under a pirate flag and root for Clemens.”
murphydog-
as usual , you express in a few words what i am trying to say with many. the hypocrisy of all those in power is what makes me take a similar position in regards to clemens and his right to innocence until proven guilty.
i’m flying under a similar pirate flag myself.
i think there is no doubt brian(redsoxfan) is flying under a red sox flag just like mitchell.
i also agree with you that a trial ,where standards are higher, is needed to get to the truth.
Murphdog -
You’re right about the Mitchell Report …. “outing” a small percentage of the players did them a tremendous disservice. And Mitchell must have known that there would be that inequitable consequence. That’s not right.
But good luck on Clemens skating by. Clamens basic problem is that he has probably been using for a number of years (10 or so), and has probably utilized multiple sources. In other words, he did it, and the federal government is going to prove it, come hell or high water.
And beating a perjury charge, or a counter-defamation suit from McNamee, will not undo the damage he has done to himself. The Black Sox won their court case, OJ won his criminal trial, and Scopes lost The Monkey Trial ….. but history records a different verdict in all three instances. I sense that Clemens’ legacy has already been written, while the furor over the inadequacies of the Mitchell Report will fade from memory.
“I sense that Clemens’ legacy has already been written, while the furor over the inadequacies of the Mitchell Report will fade from memory.”
You are absolutely right and I think its extremely irresponsible of sports writers and the fans to continue vilifying Clemens. On the outside chance that Clemens actually is innocent, think of the disservice we are doing by dragging his name through the mud?
Randy 1 – I can’t deny that I’m flying under a Red Sox flag ….. that’s why I try to exercise “truth in packaging” with my “nom de plume.” But I don’t think you have to be a jaundiced RS fan to be dubious about Clemens.
As I’ve posted here before, we saw “up close” the 40 pounds of lard he put on during his last contract with Boston (legendary workout regimen, my foot), leading to physical problems, diminished stuff and a nosedive in performance. Not that it’s a perfect analogy, but how warmly will you remember Carl Pavano 10 years from now?
the whole “Andy cheating” thing is ludicrous if you take the approach Pete Abraham has been humping – which is that Andy cheated because, even though HGH was not on the list of banned substances, it was illegal to have sans a prescription.
By that standard, then basically every baseball game that has been played since at least the 1960s is between 2 cheating teams. Amphetamine usage has been prevalent since then – possibly even before, but Jim Bouton first revealed it in “Ball Four”, so it’s impossible to judge the availability of speed to players before his career.
so in other words, if you take this rigidly ideological approach to defining cheating, MLB has been an organized cheating ring for at least the last 40 years.
all the reporters who pontificate about Pettitte – either they are incredibly misinformed for not knowing about the amphetamine usage, or they are being disingenuous.
Rebecca —- thanks for the support.
Saucy – that one hurt …. I’ll never be over that Patriot’s loss…. I can’t even blame the refs.
And it doesn’t help that I was a Giants fan back before the AFL/NFL merger. They were the “home” team in NE … Charley Conerly, Alex Webster, Emlen Tunnel, Dick Lynch, Roosevelt Grier, Jim Katcavage, etc.
Super Bowl 42 goes right up there with Aaron Boone.
“Not that it’s a perfect analogy, but how warmly will you remember Carl Pavano 10 years from now?”
Thats not just an imperfect analogy, it is completely irrelevant. Pavano didn’t give the Yankees a bit of value while Clemens was an ace for many years when he played with Boston. Just admit that you hate Clemens because your front office made a terrible decision in letting him go and because he eventually went to the Yankees. Similar to why Sox fans hate A-rod; the Boston front office lost out on a stud player while the Yankees ended up with him.
Brian,
I have read your posts and I do not having anything on your being here. I guess we are a bit sensitive about the MR and the Boston ties. This was not a good thing for baseball. As for Clemens you seem very certain about his PED usage whereas most of us really are not certain and would love the idea that he is truly fighting a righteous fight. Would you kindly share your source or reasons for your certainty?
Murph, you are right mea culpa.. just the tone rankled.
“Clemens basic problem is that he has probably been using for a number of years (10 or so)”
brian(redsoxfan)-
notice you yourself said the word”probably”.
probably?
i doubt very much that you think anyone should be convicted in court that they probably did it. you’re letting your dislike of clemens override your normal sense of fairness.
i think it’s possible and maybe even likely that clemens dabbled in hgh, like pettitte and like scores of other red sox and other mlb players. did it make pettitte a better pitcher? the answer is no. so dabbling wouldn’t have made clemens a better pitcher either.
if you notice there is no paper trail, no witnesses( who are not given self serving immunity) who have seen clemens doing steroids. even pettitte who was around him for years has no recollection of steroid use. you are right that if clemens did use steroids on a regular basis that it will come out. why the rush to judgement on your part?
i’m not saying he didn’t do it. i’ll wait for a real courtroom to get more evidence to make an informed decision. my question is why are you prejudging?
Ssooooo position players report today..
Lets talk about that instead =]
Andrew Marchant just reported Arod has reported to camp, Damon is in shape this season, Wilson Betemit has come to camp in better shape then when he came from the Dodgers.
Lets hope thats true about Damon.. To state the obvouis, we need him producing and getting on base from game 1.
“As I’ve posted here before, we saw “up close†the 40 pounds of lard he put on during his last contract with Boston (legendary workout regimen, my foot), leading to physical problems, diminished stuff and a nosedive in performance.”
I’m sorry but I don’t see this nosedive in performance of which you speak. In Clemens last 3 seasons with Boston he had an ERA+ of 177, 117, and 139 in 24,23, and 34 starts. When he pitched for Boston he was still a very good pitcher. The Boston front office just did a bad job of evaluating if Clemens had lost it or not.
DMAN it’s really true about Damon, the team trainer, Kevin Long and Girardi made it clear to the whole team come to camp in shape this year. Reports are alot of players came to camp in good shape this season.
Sweeney Murti live from training camp will be on WFAN in a few minutes.
Randy 1 — I’m not sure that I’m “prejudging.” Again, Clemens’ conditioning in his last four years in Boston was appalling. He was a blob.
Bill Simmons had a recent column about Clemens’ second 20 strikeout game (September of his last Boston season). Simmons opined that Clemens stole that memory from him , because he now wonders if Clemens had started juicing by then to improve performance and enhance his marketability.
That being said, let’s hypothesize that nothing else comes out (a la Lizzie Borden). Isn’t it reasonable to take what is known and make a best judgment? Should Clemens get a lifetime pass in the court of public opinion because there is no “smoking gun?”
Carl Everett says that there are no dinosaurs because he hasn’t seen one. A very corpulent Dominican Priest once taught the parameteres of certainty be saying, “I have never tried to high jump 7 feet, but I know I can’t.”
I totally agree that the rules of evidence available in a court of law will be of value. But there are also some rules of common sense, and my “lying eyes” tell me that Clemens, at minimum “did something” to turn his career around, and it wasn’t just extra pushups.
Randy 1, you’re a better man than me if you can so patiently wait for the wheels of justice. Maybe I’m not being totally fair, but I won’t let Clemens use my sense of fairness to insult my intelligence.
agree with you, raymagnetic. that same comment you quote hit me as just plain untrue. maybe clemens didn’t sign an autograph for brian once and he’s still ticked off.
i think the yankees are going to kick the red sox #$%$#@ this year just because of all this mitchell report partisan b.s. i think girardi will make the difference and make up for some deficiencies that have been with the yankees in the past. like conditioning.
i think he’s young and hungry. i think he’s a better manager than francona too. so despite some problems with pettitte that mitchell, the red sox executive, has caused, girardi’s singleminded focus is going to trump any
sneaky mitchell red sox behind the scenes crap .
fear the yankees this year brian. they are going to eat the red sox lunch.
By the way, speaking of baseball, am being a Nervous Nellie by thinking that the RS have only 1 1/2 dependable starters (Beckett and Dice-K)?
Maybe the Yankees would send Wang over for CoCo Crisp?
Just asking ……
if the redsox had 86 years of no WS, then 2 in this decade, does that mean, by the same reasoning used to justify clemens ped use, that the entire redsox organization is on some sort of ped?
Clemens did do something to turn his career around, he left Boston. Is it inconceivable that leaving a franchise with a losing culture (not to speak of BOS in such general terms, but pre 04 there was always the fear of the invetibale loss; see your pal Simmons for proof), would not rejuvinate a player with a fiercly competitive nature? Is it inconceivable that he gained 40lbs and DID just stop caring, which he has been widely accused of in Boston? So then the guy goes on to hear from Mr. Duquette that he is in the twilight of his career; doesn’t he want to prove otherwise? So he goes out and shows everyone that he still is what he always was. It’s not like Clemens just “got good” all of a sudden (a la David Ortiz. sorry, that might be a low blow), he showed dominance for a good deal of his career.
All of that sounds pretty loose right? Well, is it any worse than believing he used PEDs with as loose of evidence as has been provided to “prove” he did? I understand that his case seems fishy (and most people would believe that if it smells like fish, it’s probably fish), but it’s not about what you BELIEVE, its about what you KNOW (or can prove, I guess). Hence the princple of innocent until proven guilty, right?
brian(redsoxfan)-
i’m not a better man than you. we’re probably pretty much the same just on other sides of a baseball rivalry.
it’s ok for anyone of us to have an opinion just as long as we know it’s an opinion. all this stuff about clemens is just too serious to let opinions rise to the level of facts.
the little trash talk on another comment i made is a good natured attempt at getting the conversation back on the field. seriously , girardi is a winner. i think the red sox have something to worry about because it’s going to be a different yankee team on the field this year.
There isn’t any evidence anywhere, not even amongst players from that era, that Roger Clemens used PED’s while he was with the Red Sox.
Now, if weight gain is now the “proof”, why not discuss David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez? Especially since in the last 5 years, their weight gain has been noticeable.
That’s the problem with throwing out baseless allegations. You can make them fit any wild guesses you may have.
However, without proof, they are just words and nothing more.
“That’s the problem with throwing out baseless allegations. You can make them fit any wild guesses you may have.
However, without proof, they are just words and nothing more.”
Agreed. Essentially, what I was trying to say.
weight gain = steroid use?
i guess i should have just quit the roids than cigarettes 5 years ago
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