Roger Clemens and The Mitchell Report

Last week, Baseball Musings wrote about the timeline found in the Mitchell Report (See pages 167-176) on 300 game winner, Roger Clemens entitled, “Clemens 1998”.

This does not help Roger’s denial case that he’s trying to build up. Now I’m not saying that he’s lying, but I do remember when he left Boston as a free agent after the 1996 season. I remember it now because he stated his reason for leaving was that he wanted to be closer to his home in Texas. I thought that was an honorable ambition at the time. Then a few months later he signs with Toronto, which if I’m correct, is actually further away from Texas than Boston! Then he leaves Toronto after two years and signs with the Yankees and plays there for five years before finally doing what he said he would do upon leaving Boston and signed with the Houston Astros prior to the 2004 season. He played two full years there, then returned for a third in which he only pitched for 2/3 of 2006 season with Houston. The following year he left one more time to go to the Bronx for another 2/3 of a season this past year.

Baseball Musings, two days after writing “Clemens 1998”, wrote about “Pettitte’s Admission” stating, “Pettitte makes the trainer look like a reliable source. That hurts Clemens case. Why would he tell the truth about Pettitte but lie about Clemens?” 

The bottom line is that the only pitcher to ever accomplish two 20K games (pre-steroid allegation) has not built up the reputation that would lend us, baseball fans, to believe him. Then take into account his age and the numbers mentioned in “Clemens 1998”. With all that being said, I think that he, like Bonds, had accumulated Hall of Fame numbers prior to their alleged steroid use. That fact only makes them both look much more greedy which is unfortunate for baseball! Money, for some people, is truly the root of all evil.