If Roger Clemens and his team of advisers thought they'd win in the Court of Public Opinion, they appear to be sadly mistaken.
While Clemens certainly didn't pull a McGwire in his much-ballyhooed Capitol Hill appearance last week, survey after survey shows the average guy or gal just doesn't believe him. Our own admittedly-unscientific KCBS poll showed only 9% believe Clemens is telling the truth. Interestingly, 29% believe neither Clemens nor accuser Brian McNamee.
Meanwhile, Clemens' "misremembering" buddy Andy Pettite is buying himself a huge bucket of good will by "manning up". His Tampa news conference, in which he apologized to his fans and employers for using human growth hormone, stands in stark contrast to Clemens' scorched-earth battle to buff a tarnished image.
Pettite quoted the Bible, specifically John 8:32: "the truth will set you free". Pettite is a devout Christian, and it's easy for the cynical to roll their eyes when yet another athlete starts wearing his faith on his sleeve.
But Pettite's faith, in this case, led him to do the right thing. In his words, "you have to tell the truth". Few doubt that he's doing exactly that. Few believe that his pal Clemens is.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Notes On A Hearing
Is Roger Clemens telling the truth?
How about Brian McNamee?
I've been watching and listening as they face a Congressional committee today, and I can easily find "evidence" to support either man.
Yet, in the words of Congressman Henry Waxman, "it's impossible to believe this is a simple misunderstanding...someone isn't telling the truth".
Aside from the posturing of some committee members (how about Missouri's William Lacy Clay asking Clemens what uniform he'll wear to the Hall of Fame?), there are genuine holes in both versions of the story. Neither, in my opinion, offers an open-and-shut case.
So where does this leave us? Exactly where we've been for years when it comes to baseball's Bulk-Up Era: pretty sure a lot of guys were juicing. Not 100% sure, but pretty sure.
I'm not sure it really matters any more that we get to the 100% certainty mark. We've all made our own decisions at a much more important level: in our guts.
And that's where we'll all judge today's testimony.
How about Brian McNamee?
I've been watching and listening as they face a Congressional committee today, and I can easily find "evidence" to support either man.
Yet, in the words of Congressman Henry Waxman, "it's impossible to believe this is a simple misunderstanding...someone isn't telling the truth".
Aside from the posturing of some committee members (how about Missouri's William Lacy Clay asking Clemens what uniform he'll wear to the Hall of Fame?), there are genuine holes in both versions of the story. Neither, in my opinion, offers an open-and-shut case.
So where does this leave us? Exactly where we've been for years when it comes to baseball's Bulk-Up Era: pretty sure a lot of guys were juicing. Not 100% sure, but pretty sure.
I'm not sure it really matters any more that we get to the 100% certainty mark. We've all made our own decisions at a much more important level: in our guts.
And that's where we'll all judge today's testimony.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Wake Up, Hockey
The good news is, you can't see much. The bad news is, that blood on the ice is coming from Richard Zednik's carotid artery.The Florida Panthers forward needed 5 units of blood and an hour of surgery to undo the damage done by a teammate's skate in a freak accident.
Despite the damage, doctors are saying Zednik got off lucky. Considering the size of the slice and the general location, it would have been worse. Much worse.
It's time for hockey to wake up and mandate throat protection at all levels of the sport. Canadian youth hockey already requires it. Oddly enough, here in the litigious U.S.A., thousands of youth hockey players take the ice every day without any protection across the neck and throat.
The NHL could take the lead. Throat protection comes in a couple of forms (hard and soft), and all of those players who came through Canada's vast junior hockey system are already accustomed to wearing it. It's weird to read instructions for referees in games between U.S. and Canadian teams: make sure the Canadian kids are wearing throat guards (and by implication, don't worry about the U.S. skaters; it's not in the rules).
Here's what a soft neck guard looks like. A lot prettier than watching Richard Zednik's life ebb onto the ice.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Bloody Gauze Pads
OK, I have officially had enough of the Roger Clemens story.
The carefully-timed "revelation" that trainer Brian McNamee stored used syringes and blood-stained gauze pads after injecting Clemens is the last straw. How much lower can we get? Makes me want to go see the Paris Hilton movie to brighten my outlook on life.
It isn't just the scrapbooking of medical waste that's disturbing. It's all the time and money being spent to prove or disprove what was or wasn't shot into Clemens' butt. It's the obvious scheming going on, on all sides of this mess. It's the sanctimonious posturing by government officials.
Yuk.
Understand, I am not one of those people with a short attention span, the kind who needs a new hit of news adrenaline every other day. I am fascinated by stories of real import, stories that matter. But can someone please tell me why we care about this any more? Clemens' career is finished. What he did or didn't do is years in the past. If baseball cares so much about the sanctity of his statistics, let the Lords of Baseball handle (and fund) the investigation.
I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: don't Congress and the Department of Justice have better things to worry about?
The carefully-timed "revelation" that trainer Brian McNamee stored used syringes and blood-stained gauze pads after injecting Clemens is the last straw. How much lower can we get? Makes me want to go see the Paris Hilton movie to brighten my outlook on life.
It isn't just the scrapbooking of medical waste that's disturbing. It's all the time and money being spent to prove or disprove what was or wasn't shot into Clemens' butt. It's the obvious scheming going on, on all sides of this mess. It's the sanctimonious posturing by government officials.
Yuk.
Understand, I am not one of those people with a short attention span, the kind who needs a new hit of news adrenaline every other day. I am fascinated by stories of real import, stories that matter. But can someone please tell me why we care about this any more? Clemens' career is finished. What he did or didn't do is years in the past. If baseball cares so much about the sanctity of his statistics, let the Lords of Baseball handle (and fund) the investigation.
I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: don't Congress and the Department of Justice have better things to worry about?
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Good Riddance
902 wins, and still a loser in my book.
Bob Knight chose the middle of a college basketball season to quit. That's typical for a guy who's never shown any sign of understanding that he is not the center of the universe.
Give him his due: he knows basketball. I'll repeat that: Bob Knight knows basketball. Even the saintly John Wooden admires Knight's X's and O's.
But how you can ignore Knight's lifetime of execrable behavior? If the measure of a man is how he treats his fellow man, Bob Knight has a long way to go. He's behaved like a bully so many times that the incidents fade into each other.
And his final contribution to that legacy is to walk away from a basketball team in the middle of a season. Sure, he's 67 years old and college basketball's a tough life. But what about all that discipline and commitment he's demanded from his players over the years? Doesn't he owe them the same?
No, you can rack up the most wins in the history of the sport, but the game of life keeps score under a different set of rules. Bob Knight fouled out of that game long ago.
Bob Knight chose the middle of a college basketball season to quit. That's typical for a guy who's never shown any sign of understanding that he is not the center of the universe.
Give him his due: he knows basketball. I'll repeat that: Bob Knight knows basketball. Even the saintly John Wooden admires Knight's X's and O's.
But how you can ignore Knight's lifetime of execrable behavior? If the measure of a man is how he treats his fellow man, Bob Knight has a long way to go. He's behaved like a bully so many times that the incidents fade into each other.
And his final contribution to that legacy is to walk away from a basketball team in the middle of a season. Sure, he's 67 years old and college basketball's a tough life. But what about all that discipline and commitment he's demanded from his players over the years? Doesn't he owe them the same?
No, you can rack up the most wins in the history of the sport, but the game of life keeps score under a different set of rules. Bob Knight fouled out of that game long ago.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Damn It
Warning: this posting won't leave you smiling. It might make you sad, or maybe angry.
I'm a little of both right now. Here's why: three days ago, a dear friend called to tell me her 21-year-old son was dead. Drugs.
In my business, we tell stories like this all the time. In fact, a heroin overdose death is hardly even newsworthy anymore (not even in the Dallas area, where our friends live and where at least 25 young people have died in the last couple of years because of a cheap form of heroin called "cheese").
So why am I telling you? Why does this belong in a sports-related blog? Only as a reminder that the most dangerous drugs in America today are not steroids. Despite all the attention we pay to performance-enhancing drugs, we continue to lose our sons and daughters to the same damned poison that's been around for years.
If you want to know the brief details about Cory, here's his obituary. It fails, of course, to tell you everything. I have memories of a handsome boy sprinting into the surf at South Padre Island with his boogie-board. Of him bursting through the front door and dumping his load of soccer gear. Of him in the midst of a gang of neighborhood kids bouncing with delight on a backyard trampoline under the pecan trees.
Cory was not a world-class athlete, but he was athletic: soccer, football, even a year of college lacrosse before he began his descent into drug use. He was a sports fan (UT, the Cowboys, the Rangers).
Yet none of those connections to life was strong enough to pull him away from the tractor-beam of hard drugs. I remember reading Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, about the hold that sports-fandom has over many men, and thinking maybe all of us who suffer for our teams are a little pathetic.
Now, I just wish Cory was around to suffer for his teams.
I'm a little of both right now. Here's why: three days ago, a dear friend called to tell me her 21-year-old son was dead. Drugs.
In my business, we tell stories like this all the time. In fact, a heroin overdose death is hardly even newsworthy anymore (not even in the Dallas area, where our friends live and where at least 25 young people have died in the last couple of years because of a cheap form of heroin called "cheese").
So why am I telling you? Why does this belong in a sports-related blog? Only as a reminder that the most dangerous drugs in America today are not steroids. Despite all the attention we pay to performance-enhancing drugs, we continue to lose our sons and daughters to the same damned poison that's been around for years.
If you want to know the brief details about Cory, here's his obituary. It fails, of course, to tell you everything. I have memories of a handsome boy sprinting into the surf at South Padre Island with his boogie-board. Of him bursting through the front door and dumping his load of soccer gear. Of him in the midst of a gang of neighborhood kids bouncing with delight on a backyard trampoline under the pecan trees.
Cory was not a world-class athlete, but he was athletic: soccer, football, even a year of college lacrosse before he began his descent into drug use. He was a sports fan (UT, the Cowboys, the Rangers).
Yet none of those connections to life was strong enough to pull him away from the tractor-beam of hard drugs. I remember reading Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, about the hold that sports-fandom has over many men, and thinking maybe all of us who suffer for our teams are a little pathetic.
Now, I just wish Cory was around to suffer for his teams.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Bad Decision, Giants
This will probably not be a popular sentiment, but I think the Giants made a mistake in letting Pedro Feliz go. They'll tell you they made him an offer, but it was a lowball deal that showed they didn't really want him back.Look, Feliz has always had his flaws at the plate (it's an even bet that in this photo, he ended up swinging through the ball). He seldom met a first pitch that didn't deserve a hack.
Yet in fastball situations, Feliz wasn't a guy you wanted to face. In his four seasons as an everyday player, Feliz averaged 21 homers, 32 doubles and 84 RBI's a season. Very decent numbers in a ballpark that's far from friendly to righthanded hitters.
Feliz' true strengths were his glove and his versatility. The man my buddy Bob insists on calling "Happy Pete" (use your Spanish-to-English dictionary) is a 3rd baseman by trade, but he's spent time at 1st base, in the outfield, and even at shortstop in a pinch. Despite an aberrant spell in 2006 (a season in which he made 21 errors), Feliz was always a superb 3rd baseman, blessed with a well-above-average arm.
Giants GM Brian Sabean just e-mailed season ticketholders to tell them the team plans to build its post-Bonds editions on pitching and defense. Does it make sense, then, to give up on a quality defensive player who's shown he can drive in runs?
Perhaps Kevin Frandsen will make me forget Feliz, since the Giants seem ready to let him share the 3rd base job with Rich Aurilia, who will turn 37 this season. I hope so. But for now, it feels like a misplaced bet.
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