It seems like most people aren’t buying Roger Clemens’s defense of steroid charges. Here’s why I doubt him:
He’s always been an asshole. That’s made him a great pitcher, though also a sonofabitch (Piazza’s broken bat incident in W.S. with Mets). Right now he’s in complete belligerent asshole mode; and it’s not appropriate. It feels like too much, like he thinks he can win thru intimidation, rather than thru the accumulation of facts. "He doth protest too much."
He says all he cares about is his body and health. Well if that’s all he cared about, why did he inject so many legal substances into it, as he claims? He was constantly taking nostrums and pain relievers and injections, he has admitted. I know why: because he loves to win more than he loves his body. Doesn’t add up. This guy would do anything to win. He says he never pitched for fame. Ok, maybe. And that he doesn’t give a "rat’s ass" about the Hall of Fame now. I think that’s B.S. If he didn’t care about reputation, he wouldn’t be going all out right now, when his career is no longer at stake, being all but over.
At his press conference he played the phone conversation with the former trainer who dimed him out. It made no sense to me, other than that the former trainer is hangdog and weird. It felt like Clemens just wanted to crush his character. It didn’t speak to the charges. Altogether Clemens is angry, brittle and defensive. The most revealing moment in Mike Wallace’s "60 Minutes" interview was when he kept dodging the idea of taking a lie detector test. I don’t think they work either, but I wouldn’t keep insisting on that point if my reputation was on the line over a lie. If someone was lying about me, I’d take the test in a second.
