Poor Roger Clemens. After decades of making baseball fans and the baseball media believe the unbelievable, things have changed. It seems as if people have stopped buying what he's been selling despite years and years of turning a blind eye and swallowing it whole.
So yeah, poor Roger Clemens.
Clemens, of course, made a much heralded appearance with company man Mike Wallace on "60 Minutes" last night. It was on that show where Clemens admitted that he injected B-12 and lidocaine. He also told Wallace that he would submit to a lie-detector test because we all know that just like a negative drug test, a polygraph reveals everything.
But where Clemens made his mistake isn't from admitting that he injected B-12 and lidocaine with the help of his ex-trainer turned George Mitchell's rat, Brian McNamee. He made his mistake by thinking that sporting press was still largely ignorant about performance-enhancing drugs, injections and vitamins. Hey, he figured he had them believing everything he threw out there to begin with, especially the part about how "intense" his workout regime was[1], why not trot out the B-12 line?
Certainly what Clemens didn't think was going to happen was that there would be a backlash about his revelation. Really, B-12? Was he anemic? If so, why didn't he eat some spinach? You don't see Popeye injecting B-12 into his ass, do you?
Look, athletes - especially endurance athletes - get anemia. I would go so far as to call it a common malady for runners and cyclists. In fact, amongst the elite American runners out there working today I can name a bunch who struggled with bouts of anemia. Of the few of those runners that I have talked to about their iron deficiency, not one said anything about getting injections of B-12. Instead, they told me they took multi-vitamins and ate more vegetables.
That's it.
Unless Clemens was using the B-12 shots for something else, such as masking a urine test, it doesn't sound like he is being completely forthcoming.
As far as lidocaine goes, a non-anabolic steroid and anti-itch agent, couldn't Clemens just roll around in some aloe leafs?
Hey, maybe Clemens is telling the truth. Why shouldn't he? Maybe he learned how to pitch as he entered the "twilight of his career." It's not out of the ordinary for a pitcher... come on, it's not like he re-wrote the record books as came into his late-30s. Greg Maddux is still a standout pitcher in his early 40s. For the Phillies, 45-year old Jamie Moyer is just as good now as he was a decade ago. Tom Glavine shows no signs of slowing down, either. And like Clemens, Maddux, Moyer and Glavine have kept away from injuries by staying fit. The key to consistency, oddly enough, is being consistent.
So now Clemens enters into the always murky waters of public opinion, which always matters more than what a guy can prove.
[1] Yeah, I remember a time when a few sportswriters were discussing a story about Clemens in Sports Illustrated that detailed his out-of-season and in-season workouts with a curious Phillie. The part that had me on the ground laughing was when a scribe said, "He does a whole bunch of weights stuff and then he runs five miles!"