You are missing the point. This is ONLY a PR problem. That's all it's ever been. Do I care about the cheaters ruining the games? Sure. But I think leagues can only do so much. There is no test for HGH. Players are going to cycle through. All you can do is catch the guys you can and put a good PR spin on it.

The NFL got it. Baseball didn't. This isn't only about the union either. Selig could have made this an issue at multiple points over the years. The PR on this spins in the leagues favor. The players union would have been shredded in the court of public opinion and if they hadn't done anything and this came out, the players would be getting shredded right now.

It doesn't matter whcih league has more users. It matters what the league does to try to control it. If a guy comes out in ten years and says "I beat the NFL's system" he's going to be looked at as a cheater and a scumbag. The NFL won't be blamed because they'll say "look at all the things we tried to do, we can't be everywhere all the time"

I have no sympathy for the MLB in this one. Owners, players, anyone.

Umm ... yeah, he's in there.

i wish someone would ask Clemens' attorney:

"if McNamee's (Clemens' trainer) allegations are false, are you going to bring a libel or defamation of character suit against him? because, you know, that's what people do when lies are said."

i knew Clemens was juicing, and i knew it 2 seasons ago. i knew there was a reason why he would "retire" then come back during the middle of the season. it was so he could juice during the offseason then give his body time to eradicate any trace of it. Clemens is more of a moron than Canseco or Bonds - when he initially retired from the Yankees had he just stayed retired he would likely have flown under the radar. but no, he had to keep on coming back. got too greedy and that was his undoing. i'll be happy if he is prevented from going to the HoF. moreso him than Bonds.

If Clemens and Bonds should be kept out of the hall of fame, everyone who played a game at any point between 1995 and now should be ineligible. Everyone who played during the 60s and 70s should be ineligible (amphetimines).

Everyone was doing them. There was no real competitive advantage.

well, obviously there was, or else everyone would have hit 40+ HRs and every pitcher would have struck out 300+ batters. and if doing roids extends the amount of time you have in the league, letting you remain in baseball for years after when most others have faded and allowing you to break records because of your artificial longevity - there's a competitive advantage.

amphetimines aren't performance enhancers, in the sense that if you can hit 20 HR's with out them you're gonna hit 40 HR's with them. they helped you bounce back for the next game and helped keep your energy levels up through the course of a long season. but they didn't make power pitchers out of weak arms and they didn't turn singles hitters into Willie Mays.

When you've got drugs making the pitchesr AND batters better, the stats should stat about the same. It was on BOTH sides.

Baseball attempted to implement steroid testing as far back as '84, the players were for it then, but the Union itself shot it down. You don't seem to understand exactly how powerful the MLBPA was in the '80s and '90s. Baseball didn't have revenue sharing so the small market clubs would have been destroyed by an extended work stopage and the Union knew it. Thats why the union fought absolutely everything and every time there was any time of work stoppage the owners went crawling back to the players.

Selig also doesn't have the power that commissioners in other sports have since he isn't a real commissioner. He represents the weakest group of owners in all of sports. They have a history of backing down from the player's union since it was formed.

Steroids didn't become an issue with baseball fans until Bonds hit 73 and even then most fans were in awe of Bonds' season as it happened. Before that baseball had McGwire taking andro during a the homerun chase and the public didn't care. No one would have shredded the union for being against steroid testing then. Tony LaRussa and a lot of Cardinal fans actually ripped the guy that wrote the story about McGwire having Andro in his locker because "he was being nosy".

A lot of the stuff the player's union did is in the Mitchell report and the fans don't care. All they are about is names and its a shame. There's some great info in the report. There's details about baseball's attempts to implement steroid testing at multiple times and fighting with the union over it. There's quotes from Donald Fehr saying baseball doesn't need strict drug testing like the Olympics because Olympic athletes don't depend on their sport for their livelihood the way baseball players do. Hell, there's details about Gene Orza tipping off players to tests.

Also, the point of my original post was that it is mostly a PR problem. The NFL probably has more users than baseball and always has. They just actually PR'd their steroid problem better than MLB. However, its not like MLB completely turned their back on steroids and that is what I was also pointing out. Their attempts to to implement testing go back further than the NFL and switch Union reps between the two sports and I guarantee the NFL is sitting in MLB's shoes right now.

I keep hearing this statement, or the same essence:


Isn't the truth of the matter that there is no urine test for HGH, and since the MLB program calls only for urine testing, they shrug their shoulders and say that it's not something that they can test for.

But isn't it also true that there *is* in fact a blood test for HGH? I don't know about its reliability or ability to discern original versus synthetic or imported HGH, but I'm pretty sure that some sort of test does exist. Whether it is approved for use by a certain labor union or collectively bargained contract is another question.

literally there is a test for HGH but I don't think it's realistic to blood test players.

I think the spirit is there in no feasible test for HGH.

There is a blood test for hgh, and from what I'm told it is as reliable as any other steroid test.

There is a blood test for HGH and Selig took it to the player's union to discuss and Fehr has attempted to discredit the test as inaccurate and also stated that he "refuses to allow his players to become pin cushions" while also adding that some players are deathly afraid of needles.

I don't think you could pin this entirely on the player's union. The ownership did not particularly care about this issue either. Most of the drug testing proposals you mentioned were simply throwaway positions, meant primarily to enhance the ownership's overall bargaining position (i.e. drug testing was a meaningless chip that the owners could give up, so that they could keep their "chips" on issues that truly mattered to the owners).

Reportedly, Mitchell faced a lot of resistance from several MLB front offices during his investigation. That seems pretty telling to me--the ownership shouldn't exactly be sainted here.

lol

ok my knowledge of HGH is nowhere near as comprehensive as several other common roids or IGF, but it is my understanding that HGH is detectable for only 5-7 days after a cycle is stopped (cycles range from 5 days to 10 weeks) and it is a "culture" test that requires 21 days to incubate (I have no idea why, just what I have beeen told by testers)
Sooooo...

Since all leagues require a retest in the event of a positive...


BTW Reggie Jackson WAS CAUGHT AND ARRESTED for possession of steroids. Lyle Alzado killed himself with his abuse in the late 70s (I know different sport) with HGH.

lets not pretend like steroids were invented in 94.
I wouldnt be too shocked to learn that Aaron, Mantle, Ryan or any other generation of stars was using anabolics

My bad, I missed that part then....:rolleyes:

LOL.

That is hilarious. Guys like Carl Pavano could pitch one great game and be headed to the HOF. Of course, he probably took 'roids too......

Ricky Vaughn had to be on roids to throw that hard.

When you get into "my word against yours", as you almost do in steroid discussions, it's always important to consider the source. What's their credibility? What do they have to gain? What do they have to lose?

The guy who named Clemens and Pettite isn't exactly a saint, so that hurts. But he was also speaking to Mitchell under an agreement with federal law enforcement officials. He had immunity if he told the truth, but could go to jail if he said anything that wasn't true.

So on the one hand, you have a guy who faced jail time if he lied, but apparently he just went ahead and made up a detailed story about Clemens using steroid because.... well, we don't know why he would do that, maybe just because he's a jerk. On the other hand you have Clemens, who stands to lose his reputation, millions of dollars and potentially a spot in the Hall of Fame, saying he didn't do it.

Hmm....

I agree, what I'm getting at is Selig actually has attempted to get steroid testing in on his own at multiple times and implemented it in the minors without public pressure or a congressional hearing. What it comes down to is the individual owner's inability to plan ahead and the player's union seeing everything the owner's present during collective bargaining as an attempt to steal power away from them.

The NFL handled things better because they can actually work with their union. Give baseball that same union and they would have probably had testing in after the 1984 talks, 1994 at the latest. Give the NFL the MLBPA to work with and the NFL would be dealing with baseball's issues right now.

Did the owners do everything they could? No. Would they be in this situation if they weren't dealing with Gene Orza and Donald Fehr? Hell no.

Ultimately, this situation is a result of what mirrors society as a whole: money. The bottom line is what matters now, has always mattered in the past, and will always matter in the future. The owners knew what was going on but didn't care because these players were making money for their team. The players obviously did these things to make more money with bloated stats. The commissioner knew what was going on, but once again, money talks and you-know-what walks. The players union of course swept this under the rug and "encouraged" Selig to do the same because of: you guessed it, money $$$$$$. Everyone was getting paid, so nobody cared about the ramifications. Well, now the proverbial %#@* is hitting the fan, and they all look like the liars, cheaters, and moneygrubbers that we always knew they were.

I feel kinda bad for the 5-10% of players that actually did nothing wrong through all of this.

Everyone in baseball for the last decade+ should be considered as a potential juicer.

That said, Randy Johnson's career doesn't strike me as one that necessarily screams "juicer". Yes, he had tremendous performances into his late 30's and into his early 40's. But he didn't magically start throwing the ball harder in the early '90's - the abilities that propelled him to greatness were always present: the high 90's fastball, the wicked slider, a deceptive delivery and his height and length that meant his 97 MPH fastball arrived at the plate quicker than anyone else's due to it having a shorter path getting there.

What transformed Johnson's career in 1993 was a long talk with Nolan Ryan and a changed approach on the mound - he dramatically cut his walk rate and his strikeout rate jumped, because he started trusting his stuff more, throwing more strikes and taking a more intelligent approach in attacking hitters. That trend started in '93, and by '95 or so he'd refined his approach to near perfection, and his subsequent seasons were basically repeats of that season. The aberrations from that point were due to injury ('96, '03) and a combination of bad luck and his head being messed-up over contract issues ('98).

Does that mean that he didn't at some point in there also start juicing to counteract the effects of aging, or to recover from injury or fatigue quicker? Not at all. But unlike someone like Joel Pineiro (who is widely considered locally to have been a juicer) who gained a significant bump in velocity, Johnson always had the fastball, and I don't recall ever hearing that his velocity jumped in his later years - in fact it clearly started to fade a bit, and he relied more and more on his slider and developed a forkball/changeup to add to his repertoire.

I think you can look at his career progression and find a plausible explanation that doesn't include performance-enhancers.

I think this is true, but was it so unreasonable? What's more important to the game, fixing the steroid issue or trying to restore competitive balance (granted, they didn't really accomplish either).

What if the owners said, "players, we'll give you everything you want, but we want a legitimate steroids program". Maybe a deal gets done. But would you want to be a fan of that MLB?

The early hard-line in the last strike was the oppositte - "players, help us fix the payroll disparity and we'll give you most of what you want otherwise". Eventually, of course, the owners caved.

Yeah, although there has to be a belief of "anyone can be on steroids, we just don't know," Randy Johnson is probably one of the few "stars" that never popped into my mind. I think he's clean.

I'm not disagreeing with you here. My point was that the owners' motivations on the steroid issue should be interpreted as a short-term tactic in the context of bargaining and negotiation, rather than any idealistic desire to "clean up the game" long-term or whatever.

I agree. Let's be realistic here. Manny would have injected the oral treatments, drank the injected treatments, put "The Cream" on his glove and "The Clear" on his shoes and wonder why the hell nothing was happening.


Why?

Plenty of regular people get regular blood tests. Diabetics, for one. Anyone on statin therapy drugs, for another.

No need for the :rolleyes: , I had to go back & doublecheck to make sure myself.

There were so many names flying around yesterday between the "leaked" list that wasn't accurate & the actual list at the end of the day, it was hard for a lot of people, including me to keep up with who was mentioned when.

The only reason I was pretty sure about Brown was because I was watching for his name in the report because of his Georgia Tech background.

it's realistic for individuals yes. for the whole of major league baseball this seems a bit unrealistic.

you can yes though.

For those that haven't seen it yet, Shysterball is in the midst of analyzing and commenting on the Mitchell report. Some good stuff in there and definitely worth the read:

Shysterball fisks the Mitchell report

Are you saying it's unrealistic logistically?

OMG Funny Stuff that is. From what I have seen of him (which is as little as possible since I loathe the Dead Sox), he 1) does not seem the cheating type because of his apparent "I don't care if we win or lose, there is always next year" attitude; and 2) his numbers have been pretty steady throughout his career. I mean, c'mon - his fielding is still horrible, so wouldn't 'roids and/or HGH help to alleviate that a little?

kind of

and in the fact that it's something unlikely to be collectively bargained

Well, I disagree with you there. I don't think it would be all that difficult, logistically, especially with the amount of money MLB has at its disposal.


Now that I'll agree with.

Sucks about Clemens, because he was one of my favorite pitchers to watch play, but Ankiel hurts worse.... I really rooted for his comeback :(

Don't have links for you but just saw on ESPN that David Justice has denied the accusations in the Mitchell Report-only saw the tail end of the report-sounds like he asked about it and chickened out when he heard it involved needles.

FP Santangelo has come forward to say that he did indeed use HGH over a two year period, but denies using anything else.

Can correct myself concerning Justice. Was approached by Clemens trainer (when Justice was a Yankee?) who told him about steroids or HGH that would help him recover from an injury. Justice claims he had never heard of the stuff until that trainer told him about it. The trainer put some in his locker for him to take a look at Justice said, but when he saw it involved needles he wanted nothing to do with it. Says if it was a pill he probably would have taken it though. Also said to look at his stats the year after this conversation with the trainer happened-they weren't good so he couldn't have been on steroids.

Because steroids is a guarantee to improve his stats, right?

So if everyone had to pick a year as the last "clean" year, what would it be? Let's say "clean" is stuff being used by less than 20% of the players or what would amount to about 5 players per team.

yeah he's not exactly the brightest bulb on the christmas tree. ;)

Do greenies count?

If so, I'd say 1951.

I think the perception that the NFL has made more of an effort to control it is probably a bunch of false advertising on its part more than anything else. I have few doubts that the NFL is just as guilty, if not more so, of looking the other way, all the while spouting the nonsense that it took care of the problem in 1987.

What's worse. Baseball in the steroid era or major league baseball pre-1947?

HOF voters speak on Clemens
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3155168

i predict 2040. when players start getting genetically enhanced without the need for roids or hgh

It's not like there aren't legal supplements. There are lots of ways to bulk up that aren't against the rules so just because a player gets bigger doesn't mean they were 'roiding up. If they put it on all at once, over a winter, that looks quite insinuating. But, for instance, Frank Thomas was always big. It's not like he came into the league as a beanpole.



SI

In the end, I just can't put nearly as much on the owners as on the players and to suggest it seems ludicrious to me. One party actively participated in the crime while the other stood by and tacitly watched it. It's a completely different level of participation and should be judged as such. Did the owners benefit from it? Yes. Did they actively encourage it? No. Were they the ones doing it? No.

So all this nonsense about parties being *equally* to blame is academically lazy, at best.

SI

How sure are you that the owners did not actively encourage it?

what worse. baseball now or baseball to the groin

How many people do you know or have you met that have actually gotten bigger as they get older? The only ones I know that fit that description took something....and well, it wasn't legal.

To not lay equal blame on both the owners and the players is just naive. Why would the owners NOT encourage it? They had everything to gain by doing so, and nothing to lose. The players took all the risk and got the reward, the owners took no risk by encouraging yet still got the reward as well. It was a win-win situation for the owners. Take a look at some of the notes in the Mitchell report taken by the Dodgers. The proof is in the pudding.

I know quite a few folks who have never taken anything illegal, who use legal supplements and work out, who have gotten bigger as they've gotten older.

I don't know where this mythology of people not getting bigger as they age -- and we're not talking 40 to 50 or 60, but 20s into their 30s...it's not that unprecedented or even that unusual.

Not saying pro athletes fit this mold, but...if I've seen it from folks who don't have close to the financial wherewithal of pro athletes, I'm sure it's doable among those who have the money to get world class everything.

Actually, I'm not sure I know anyone who worked out regularly who wasn't bigger in their mid- to late-20s than they were in their late teens or early 20s.

Yes, but what about when they hit late 30's into their 40's? :confused:

Any chance in hell the MLBPA does the right thing and agree to olympic-style drug testing?

Are you kidding?

I entered the military at 19 years old at 6'2 weighing 145 lbs. When I got married at 24 I weighed 175 lbs. I turned 35 last month I weigh 252 lbs working out in the weight room and doing cardio six days a week. I don't take any supplements, don't have acne, damn sure can't hit a baseball 100 feet much less over any fence. I am stronger than I was at 19, I can run longer distances than I could at 19. I am in better shape now than I was at 19. If I can do that, while stuffing myself with fried foods, alcohol etc., I am sure a world class athlete can do it without using steroids.

Doesn't pretty much _everyone_ get bigger between 18-45?

Pussy :p

Seriously, if a person is working out religiously from age 10, they won't be much stronger past age 24 or so, but most people are not that dedicated enough in their younger years to make it implausible.

This is ridiculous- again, tacitly watching vs actively participating are very different. Yes, there is *some* blame but not *equal* blame.

Also, to turn this around, why *would* the owners encourage it? The players were dumb enough to be doing it on their own. It's not as if they needed an extra push from management to be doing it.

What notes about the Dodgers are you talking about in the Mitchell report? (btw, this is pretty much an exhaustive list of the 54 mentions of "Dodgers" in the searchable PDF version of the Mitchell report but I could have missed something)
-The Dodgers who tried to require steroid testing for all new players that were shot down in 1985 in favor of a comprehensive league-wide plan without teeth because "the Players Association reiterated its opposition to mandatory drug testing"?
-Or the part where the Dodgers officials were talking about how they didn't want 'roided players on their team (Estalella, Gibbons) or how they wanted to trade away 'roiders (LoDuca, Brown)?
-Or the coach in the Dodgers system who rebuffed a player who went to him when a player (Donnels) asked about steroids and said “look it up on the computer” and said “I don’t need to hear anything about it."
-Or minor league conditioning coach "Seyler [who] did not tell anyone in
Dodgers management that he or any of these players were purchasing steroids."

I fail to see the culpability you described with the front office and it's much more on the players. Just because the owners in baseball have the worst PR in the history of any billionaires club in the world, doesn't mean you should just buy the crap that people are shoveling.

SI

I can take a look at the stats and see what you are saying about a transformation in approach back in 1993. That's fine. However, while he had some outstanding seasons throughout the 90's, he essentially "peaked" at the age of 37(!) in 2001, when he posted his best K/9 and second lowest WHIP and that year wasn't just an aberration as it was preceded and followed up by very strong seasons.

I'm not saying it's impossible that he wasn't on the juice, however to me, looking at his career numbers (playing in the era he did), they scream performance enhancement. Steroids aren't just about getting bigger and stronger, there are other factors such as quicker recovery times, etc.

Randy Johnson is interesting to me because I think he did but I also think he just got some better control.

Management created and participated in an environment which rewarded players some players who would not have been major leaguers without the juice and punished some players who would have been good enough if no one juiced. To me that is not just tacitly watching.

Honestly, does it matter? I say 50/50 blame. You say more blame on the players. Fine, the players are 75,85, 95 percent to blame and the owners get the leftovers. The blame game is what got the MLB is the position it is in now. If the players, coaches, managers, front office had spent as much time trying to deal with the issue as they have trying to blame everyone else for for the issue, the sport would have been better off.

Well, that's the shame of it all isn't it - we can't know for sure who was and who wasn't juicing without the player admitting it or some compelling evidence.

It may well be that Johnson juiced, and for him (as it appears to be for Clemens) it was more about maintaining his dominance than it was about clearly exceeding his prior established performance (as seems to be the case with Bonds).

On the other hand, maybe Johnson simply dedicated himself to physical training and once he'd figured out how to pitch and harnessed his control, it was simply a matter of staying healthy until his physical dominance finally started to fade.

It's important to note that physical training and legal nutritional supplements have progressed a great deal in the last couple of decades; a player who is already physically gifted can, with dedicated strength training and watching their diet, achieve and stay in high-level physical condition for many years.

As I noted, Randy Johnson is a physical freak - a 6'10" lefty with a somewhat deceptive delivery and great mechanics and fantastic arm speed generating a high-90's fastball and a wicked slider. With his height and delivery, his fastball probably got to the plate as fast or faster than just about any pitcher in history. Now, perhaps he juiced for the purposes of combating the natural wear and tear on his arm, allowing him to stay on top of his game well into his late 30's and early 40's - wouldn't surprise me. But, he may also just be a guy with the right genetics and the right mechanics to allow himself to avoid excessive damage to his arm.

What complicates things (for me) is Nolan Ryan - when he continued to dominate batters well into his 40's, it seemed to establish that it was possible for guys with the right mechanics and physical gifts to be very effective power pitchers for 20+ years, and so seeing guys like Clemens and Johnson follow similar paths in his wake, it didn't necessarily seem so odd. Now that we have confirmation of what many suspected, that Clemens was juicing, it makes you wonder whether Ryan may have as well. If he didn't, he provides an example that shows that what Johnson has done can be achieved without illegal supplements.

Looking over his stats, I think it's not really true that Johnson peaked at 37. He was about 31 when he established his dominance, and was very consistent over the next 6-7 years except in years when he had injuries or was trying to get traded.

Yep, that's how I look at it. When you consider the difference in leagues and no DH in the NL, I don't think his numbers with Arizona are really any better than his numbers with Seattle in '95 & '97 (he was injured in '96) outside of the innings pitched.

Pettitte has come forward to admit using HGH. I don't see how Clemens can continue denying now.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3156305

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3156305

Makes Clemens look the worse now that Pettite's admitted using...even if it's under the situation it is, I'm sure he went to Clemens to ask.

I imagine a lot of these players will come out now and say, "ya, I took something 7 years ago for a couple of weeks when I was rehabbing an injury".

Then it'll become like the "Pete Rose only bet to win" myth.

I can't tell tell if thats really ESPN or if its an Onion article.

These players must think that all of us fans are complete morons. Brian Roberts says he only used it once in 2003. Yeah. Right. Andy Petitte says he only used it to rehab faster to help his team. What a complete joke. They are cheaters and should be labeled as such. As a Yankees fan i am completely and utterly embarassed. I would give back the 2000 World Series if we could get rid of Giambi and Petitte and erase all record that any of the other players that took this stuff ever even existed. :(

I don't even mind the cheating so much as these bullshit denials, and then half-denials (I only used it once).

Getting caught doing something, and then admitting the absolute minimum is such a chickenshit move, and unfortuantely, it's one that very effective in the public eye. I've already heard at least one sports radio guy saying - "Why are cruicfying Petitte, a guy who only used a few times". Same deal with Rose. He admits, but admits the absolute minimum, "I bet to win!!" Bullshit.

What's the point anymore? Why is every single player, without fail, making the whole MLBPA look like a bunch of assholes?

Well said. I agree except for the cheating part. Once we accept cheating on a large scale as a society, everything will turn to shit for the future. I think about my son playing sports (he is 6 right now), and how if cheating is accepted in baseball, then he will have to endanger his life by taking HGH and steroids just to be able to compete with others his age. That would be a shame and a travesty.

As for the lying and deception, I really just want to walk up to each of these guys that has denied or admitted very little (you know who you are, Clemens, Bonds, Petitte, Roberts, Vina, etc.) and punch each one right in the neck. That's all.

I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but this is an interesting read from C.J. Nitkowski regarding Brian McNamee (one of the primary sources of info in the Mitchell report and the guy that fingered Clemens). Also refreshing to see Nitkowski admit he seriously considered juicing, and not because he was trying to recover from injury - he'd had a bad year and was looking at ways to bounce back.

The article:
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/12533581.html

This whole "I only used to it once, blah blah blah" is a bunch of BS. IMO, it's obvious that since they were caught, they now to try and save face, they admit it, so they seem like the good guys now, but, as the other guys already said, admit to the minimum. I honestly had no real big problem with this whole "steroids problem". IMO, it happened, it was part of the era, rules are now in place which will continue to get stronger...let it go. However, I know have a problem with the fact that guys like Pettitte and such will be looked at with no hard feelings since "it was only twice to help rehab". Bunch of crap.

How did this not get posted? An actual headline from the Trentonian on the 14th of Dec.

That's tremendous. Something you're going to notice on the newstand.

So proud to have that be the paper of my home state's capital.

They fingered 10% of the league with 2 trainers. You get all 32 trainers, and chances are, its almost the whole league. Pettite, etc, aren't any worse than the rest of them, they just happen to have a trainer who talked.



They all used it. Move on. We'll be much better off, if like Mitchell said, we look to fixing this, instead of going on a witch hunt.

No witch hunt. Just disappointment. I always had suspicions that Clemens did the stuff, but the fact that he is clearly lying about it now despite the evidence is disconcerting. MLB is dead to me.

Did anyone see Clemens youtube video?
http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/024308.php

Clemens is a liar.

Why do MLB players insist on the charade? "I didn't use" or "I only used once". What a bunch of pussies.

Changed my mind.

Read about steroids in the animal kingdom.

Surprised there's been no talk yet about Clemens on 60 Minutes last night, or the fact that's he's now suing McNamee-after an hour long phone conversation with him apparantly. Plus he has a news conference later today. Only saw a tiny part of the 60 minutes piece so can't really comment on it. I thought having a phone conversation with McNamee though, especially for as long as it went on was a bit strange. What were they talking about? Making a deal?

From what I've heard about the lawsuit, it seems like Clemens lawyer is making it sound like McNamee was coerced into saying stuff about Clemens taking steroids. Makes little sense why the government would do that to me, but then little of what the government does makes sense to me these days. :)

it was obvious clemens was full of it in that 60 minutes interview.

whenever someone answers a question with "think about it, why would I do that." you know he's lying his ass off.

The fact that McNamee's claim about Pettite was corroborated by Pettite himself gives McNamee all the credibility I need to see. Not to mention McNamee goes to jail if it ends up he lied about Clements to federal investigators. Here's a question for you Roger, "why would McNamee tell the truth about Pettite but lie about you?" In fact, Roger was asked that very question in the 60 minutes program. Roger's answer was "Andy's case is totally separate." I'm sorry, come again?

You guys might want to check out Shysterball.com - Clemens' case is looking better and better: http://shysterball.blogspot.com/