{"id":77,"date":"2008-01-07T21:48:43","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T02:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2008-01-07T21:48:43","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T02:48:43","slug":"why-do-we-not-believe-roger-clemens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We NOT Believe Roger Clemens?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks ago I wondered<\/a>\u00a0why we believed Andy Pettitte and his story of brief, injury-driven steroid use.\u00a0 At the time, it seemed like the public was somewhat okay with Pettitte’s explanation and sort of gave him a pass.\u00a0 (NOTE: \u00a0a lot of that sentiment has faded into distrust of Pettitte also, but at the time, I thought the question worth asking.\u00a0 It even generated a lively discussion on in the comments of that post.)\u00a0 In almost a complete contrary to the [immediate] public reaction to Pettitte’s qualified, yet spirited\u00a0mea culpa<\/em>, the public reaction to Roger Clemens’s bold-faced denial is\u00a0complete distrust and public admonishment of the 7-time Cy Young award winner.\u00a0 Just as I raised the [semi-rhetorical] question of why we believed Andy Pettitte, I raise the question of why we do not <\/em>believe Roger Clemens.<\/p>\n

Where is the benefit of the doubt?\u00a0 Where is the innocent until proven guilty?\u00a0 Why can we not just wait and see about all of this so-called “evidence?”<\/p>\n

I do not like Roger Clemens.\u00a0 I never have, and I never will.\u00a0 I think he is cocky, brash and obnoxious.\u00a0 I think he sees himself as an almighty figure who does not need to travel with his team or even play the first couple months of the season.\u00a0 But, does this make him a cheater?\u00a0 I do not want <\/em>to believe Roger Clemens, but is there really enough evidence to convict him?\u00a0 I say, no…<\/p>\n

…But, you know what?\u00a0 I don’t care.\u00a0 I do not believe Roger Clemens in any way whatsoever.<\/p>\n

I would love to explain all the reasons why, but a much better writer already did it for me.\u00a0\u00a0Gene Wojciechowski’s latest blog entry<\/a> on ESPN.com sums up exactly <\/em>how I feel.\u00a0 I love his very first point about the complete hypocrisy of Clemens’s defense that “steroids are a short-term fix” and\u00a0anyone who takes them will\u00a0get\u00a0“punishment enough”\u00a0by what is done to their bodies over the long-term.\u00a0 Yet, as Wojchiechowski so astutely points out, Clemens boasts about taking pain injections and numbing agents so that he could pitch with a “golf-ball sized knot in his elbow.”<\/p>\n

I am not going to pile on the best pitcher of our time (much like everyone did to the best hitter of our time) because I think, this time, the public is getting it right.\u00a0 I am not, generally, a cynical malcontent who believes that everyone is cheating and nothing is pure anymore, but in the case of this steroid fiasco in baseball, when there is smoke, there has proven to always be fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks ago I wondered\u00a0why we believed Andy Pettitte and his story of brief, injury-driven steroid use.\u00a0 At the time, it seemed like the public was somewhat okay with Pettitte’s explanation and sort of gave him a pass.\u00a0 (NOTE: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[100,94,167,95],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-andy-pettitte","tag-mitchell-report","tag-roger-clemens","tag-steroids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}