Thursday, December 13, 2007
Looks to me like The Rocket is the biggest name in the Mitchell Report, although there is certainly no shortage of big names. Looks like the Mets were as close to being at the center of the problem as anyone else.
Clemens is going to be badly damaged, I'd say. He'd had a great career with Boston, but his real credentials are from the time he left, from '97 on. 3.02 ERA with the Sox over 13 seasons; 3.28 over the next 11 with Toronto, New York and Houston. He was a great player and a borderline Hall of Fame player before he left the Sox, but it's the second half of his career that really put the ! on his resume. All that stuff about going into the Hall with a Yankees cap was true: he needed a World Series title to ice it.
In a funny way, Barry Bonds may benefit from all this. He's been made the steroids goat, probably mostly because he is such a disagreeable guy, probably also because of race. If you look at the numbers, it is pretty plain that both Bonds and Clemens should have been spotted as doing something, but Bonds is the guy who they threw syringes at. Clemens got written up for his amazing fitness regime. Are they both out? I don't think so-- and that means that they both have to go in.
A couple of further thoughts, both Bill James related. James writes somewhere that Whitey Herzog, just turned away from the HOF, incidentally, was one of the few people who came away from baseball's last drug scandal with his reputation intact. The White Rat didn't tolerate recreational drug use at KC or in St. Louis-- it contributed to his losing his job with the Royals, and he took all kinds of heat in St. Louis when he traded Keith Hernandez. I wonder if there is a similar figure that will emerge from the current mess.
A related question (maybe from the same James essay): baseball is a mirror of society-- when we think about the late 70's and early '80's we recall that baseball had a drug problem, but we don't necessarily recall the ubiquity of drugs in American culture as a whole. Is the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball just the visible manifestation of a larger issue in American society? I haven't seen anyone writing about this, yet, but I think it is something we are going to have to get our minds around.
Update, 1214/07 Looks like the newspaper of record disagrees with me on the cap thing: the front page picture of Clemens shows him in Blue Jays gear. Sure, that's the earliest date his steroid use is said to have occurred, but the fact that the Times has an ownership interest in the BoSox couldn't have been a factor when they were making layout decisions, could it? Two years with the Jays, who have among the fewest links in MLB in the Mitchell Report (Yanks are #1, Mets and Orioles tied for second, Dodgers third, and what does that tell us?). Two years in Toronto and this is the thanks they get.
Clemens is going to be badly damaged, I'd say. He'd had a great career with Boston, but his real credentials are from the time he left, from '97 on. 3.02 ERA with the Sox over 13 seasons; 3.28 over the next 11 with Toronto, New York and Houston. He was a great player and a borderline Hall of Fame player before he left the Sox, but it's the second half of his career that really put the ! on his resume. All that stuff about going into the Hall with a Yankees cap was true: he needed a World Series title to ice it.
In a funny way, Barry Bonds may benefit from all this. He's been made the steroids goat, probably mostly because he is such a disagreeable guy, probably also because of race. If you look at the numbers, it is pretty plain that both Bonds and Clemens should have been spotted as doing something, but Bonds is the guy who they threw syringes at. Clemens got written up for his amazing fitness regime. Are they both out? I don't think so-- and that means that they both have to go in.
A couple of further thoughts, both Bill James related. James writes somewhere that Whitey Herzog, just turned away from the HOF, incidentally, was one of the few people who came away from baseball's last drug scandal with his reputation intact. The White Rat didn't tolerate recreational drug use at KC or in St. Louis-- it contributed to his losing his job with the Royals, and he took all kinds of heat in St. Louis when he traded Keith Hernandez. I wonder if there is a similar figure that will emerge from the current mess.
A related question (maybe from the same James essay): baseball is a mirror of society-- when we think about the late 70's and early '80's we recall that baseball had a drug problem, but we don't necessarily recall the ubiquity of drugs in American culture as a whole. Is the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball just the visible manifestation of a larger issue in American society? I haven't seen anyone writing about this, yet, but I think it is something we are going to have to get our minds around.
Update, 1214/07 Looks like the newspaper of record disagrees with me on the cap thing: the front page picture of Clemens shows him in Blue Jays gear. Sure, that's the earliest date his steroid use is said to have occurred, but the fact that the Times has an ownership interest in the BoSox couldn't have been a factor when they were making layout decisions, could it? Two years with the Jays, who have among the fewest links in MLB in the Mitchell Report (Yanks are #1, Mets and Orioles tied for second, Dodgers third, and what does that tell us?). Two years in Toronto and this is the thanks they get.
