It’s not like I can come up with a whole lot of reasons why I’m not sad to see Roger Clemens fall so completely, to the point where he might be the first ever major leaguer to actually do time for crimes related to steroid use, but the ones I have feel like plenty.
To say he was a pompous piece of shit impugns all other pompous pieces of shit, even among all-star major leaguers, which frankly is a self-selecting group of PPOSes. The guy had never heard the word no, never acknowledged his team once over his entire 76-year career — he often appeared convinced that the other people on the field dressed just like he was were merely ardent fans who had won some kind of contest to stand closer to the light of the world that was the Rocket than anyone else did, and not fellow players, often all-stars themselves, who at least still had some dim understanding of what being part of a team was all about, or at the very minimum understood the good PR of paying lip service to same — and seemed, constantly, to mistake himself for some kind of God, whose word was law and whose every thought was gospel.
He had long since surrounded himself with an entourage of people who worshipped at the light that shone from his Texas-sized ass, and who repeatedly covered for his every indiscretion and transgression, be it with an underaged country singer, a botched negotiation that resulted in switching teams under cover of night and under suspicious circumstances (a feat Rocket and his people committed multiple times over his career), or getting his people to bring steroids across the border in both directions so he could maintain his self-image as the greatest pitcher who ever lived.
The numbers he amassed over his career are impressive. Of course they are. But the conversation of the best to ever throw no longer includes him. His reputation has finally caught up with him, and all the puff pieces in ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated aren’t (and won’t be) enough to hide the fact that this guy is missing a certain self-awareness that is required to actually function in society, and all those strikeouts, all those awards and all that money are merely numbers on a page, next to the actual careers-as-careers of people like Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax. Shit, Don Drysdale and Steve Carlton turned out to be jackasses of the highest order too, but at least they played the game properly, and they earned their way into the Hall of Fame.
It wasn’t just that Rocket did steroids. Lots of people have had that happen, and seriously, it’s baseball, the sport of stolen bases, the hidden-ball trick, spitballs and hidden emery boards. If you cheat and get away with it, more power to you. Crime pays. It’s that Rocket forgot that sports aren’t life. Had he stayed in the sporting world, he’d still be a world-class dick who ruined every team he left and named his kids Kody, Kris, Krusty, Kumquat and Karrot, but he’d have been able to take a few years off from the game, go sit on his pile of money on his half of the state of Texas where all his trophies are, and come back in a few years after all this had blown over to accept his Hall of Fame induction and re-enter the sport as an owner or a broadcaster or whatever the hell he wanted. But he forgot sport wasn’t reality, or maybe he never knew in the first place, and so he showed up on Capitol Hill and testified under oath that he had never taken steroids, had never met with the people they were accusing him of meeting with, and what, you’re gonna believe these little shits when I’m the one telling you the truth? I didn’t do anything wrong. These twerps just hate the Rocket for being Rocket! Look me in the face and tell me you believe them over me. Fuck this sworn testimony bullshit. I’m telling you, man to man, I ain’t done what they say I did. How can that not be enough for you, Senator?
So now, he faces a couple of years in the pen for perjury, and Cooperstown is fading fast. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. There was another way, though. Consider the case of Mark McGwire.
A lot of the facts are the same. kid phenom, power player, succeeded at every level he ever played at, was a star from Day One in the majors, developed a reputation for being reclusive and boorish off the field, but no one cared as long as he kept hitting the long ball, and allowed himself to be the marquee guy in the sport when it really needed one. He played the game. And when congress came calling to investigate him for steroid use, he didn’t thump his chest and try to lie his way out of a paper bag. He actually listened to his lawyers. He turned turtle. I’m not here to talk about the past, Mister Senator, sir. I’m here to talk about the future of the game. Over and over again. He wouldn’t answer a single question. I’m not here to talk about the past. Like Alberto Gonzales, his testimony-that-wasn’t made him look like the lying sack of shit he was, and he was mocked unmerciful for years afterward, but after that, he disappeared into the California hills, and has only started to make appearances again in the last few months. And people seem to have begun the forgiveness process. He might even get into Cooperstown someday.
For Rocket, there’s no chance. If he spends even one day in prison for this, he’ll replace Barry Bonds as the poster child of all that is wrong with this era. And frankly, that’s as it should be. But he’ll probably get probation, and he’ll buy a baseball school somewhere, and while his statistics will endure and be passed by better cheaters and the occasional actual great player, his place on the Mount Olympus of the greatest douchebags in the history of sport will remain unobscured, unblemished, and immutable.
