The Nest

Is Roger Clemens’ place in baseball history tainted?

Once, not long ago, Roger Clemens stood in a position to become a baseball legend. In only 2006, he was voted the greatest living pitcher by a panel of ESPN analysts. He had already won 7 Cy Young awards, and had joined the exclusive club of pitchers with more than 4,000 career strikeouts. An illustrious career to say the least.

But there has always been an uncomfortable undertone with Clemens; you couldn’t quite put your finger on it but he was not the squeaky-clean hero newsmen and agents dream of. He’s always been known to be aggressive, even mean at times, and after the 2007 season was declared 9th in the roster of all-time hit-batsmen. From 2000 on, he has regularly been accused of diva-like behavior, from his insistence that he not be forced to travel with the team to his complaints about carrying his own luggage at the airport.

Then there was the broken-bat incident in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, when a fastball Clemens threw broke Mike Piazza’s bat on impact. The ball went foul, and a shard of the bat came toward Clemens, nearly hitting him. Clemens’ reaction was inexplicable. He ran up, grabbed the bat shard, and then threw it at Piazza, who, still unaware the ball was foul, was running for first base. Clemens dismissed it as nervous energy, but the peculiar behavior lends some credence to Jose Canseco’s 2006 accusations, in his book Juiced, that Clemens was probably a habitual steroid taker.

The steroid accusations came to a head when Clemens’ trainer, , came forward and claimed he’s injected The Rocket with HGH and various steroids over the course of several years, accounting for Clemens’ great improvement when he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays after leaving the Red Sox, a move that many saw as the end of his career instead of its renaissance. Though Clemens has steadfastly denied any use of steroids, there is no real proof on either side. Clemens is attacking the charges with his usual aggressiveness, but McNamee has no clear reason for making untrue allegations (though there are records he’s made false allegations before to investigators and to the media).

It appears that whether or not Roger Clemens has used steroids will be shrouded in mystery, at least for now. But his reputation took a hit, perhaps because his difficult behavior in the past made it easy to believe bad of him, and now it’s taking another hit: the great family man Clemens is being accused by a woman of having a decade-long affair…(continued)

roger clemens, steroids, brian mcNamee, mike piazza, red sox