He was terrible. LOL that the Chair had to bang his gavel at him to shut him up at the end of the hearing. But the Reps were a disgrace today for coming down on Rogah's side, and making this issue divisive along political lines. They are going to lose in the court of public opinion on this, too. That they chose to go down with clemens' ship is pitiful.
He did get better after age 35. That doesn't mean every season was great. Compare 1993-1996 with 1997-2006 and take into account that he should have been declining after 1996, like every normal player. Instead of his numbers declining, they got better.
I won't get all caught up in the "innocent until proven guilty" thing. If I had a little judge and jury in my noggin, I could strike the used needles and bloody gauze pads as incompetent evidence. I could weigh all testimony on a traditional criminal legal scale - beyond a reasonable doubt. That's if I had a little judge and jury in my head. . . . Barring that, I'm perfectly capable of saying, "I've seen and heard enough." He has no plausible explanation to reconcile Pettitte's testimony; much of his testimony was improbable and appeared, in my mind, to be manufactured; Brian McNamee has zero reason to lie and, more notably, he's been confirmed with nearly everything else that he's said. I don't need anything more. Roger Clemens took steroids. Roger Clemens took HGH. He's not alone, but he's certainly not the innocent victim he portrays. Not by a long shot. Court adjourned.
go back and point out where i am making a case for clemens. i am only saying you are making biased conclusions with NO EVIDENCE. By your logic players like Schilling and Randy johnson obviously take steroids because they are performing when they should be declining. you can hope he took steroids all you want but the bottom line is you can't say you are 100% sure until you have some kind of concrete evidence.
Neither of those players had a marked improvement like Clemens. Plus, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence against Clemens. Not so for Schilling and Johnson.
clemens numbers go up and down during the years he was accused of using. curt schillings best numbers come after the age of 34. randy johnsons best numbers come after age 35. this is just from a brief glance at their numbers. you are supposed to decline as you get older, but sometimes it just doesnt happen.
From the NYT: Mr. Clemens was also grilled by John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, about his sworn statements that he had never talked with Mr. McNamee about H.G.H. With repeated questions, Mr. Tierney seemed to be setting Mr. Clemens up for charges he had lied to government officials if it was proven otherwise. He challenged Mr. Clemens to defend the statement in light of other statements he had talked to Mr. McNamee after his wife was injected. Mr. Clemens replied that he had meant he never had a detailed conversation with McNamee about H.G.H. The committee plans to release medical records from Toronto that show Mr. Clemens may have had an abscess from an injection in 1998. Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the committee had to threaten to issue a subpoena before it got an MRI result from Toronto on Monday. The MRI said a mass on Mr. Clemens?s buttock was ?likely related to the patient?s prior attempted intramuscular injections.?
When I listened to Clemens on the radio he came off ok but getting home and watching the highlights and seeing how squirmy he was he looked guilty. Hopefully he gets jail time for his lies.
By the way, Pettitte also deserves a big punishment for lying as well and MLB should suspend him for a while this season.
Okay, but thats not the same thing as saying he got a "lot better" after 35. You still ahven't said which stats you think establish your point? Win totals? Cy young awards? I think his longevity is attributable to magic potions. I don't see how he got better as he got older. Unlike Bonds, for example.
Clemens shelled by Congress By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports 15 hours, 37 minutes ago WASHINGTON ? Question by question, disputed answer by disputed answer, Roger Clemens? house of lies came tumbling down upon him Wednesday. Whatever Clemens thought he?d get out of turning a sporting controversy into a federal case courtesy of this congressional hearing never materialized. He scored few points while getting caught up in his own words, nonsensical logic and twisted timelines, even before his friend and former teammate Andy Pettitte laid him out. Presumably there are people in America who still believe Clemens is the only honest man in this entire sordid steroid scandal, that the entire world (friends included) decided one day to gang up and frame him, that he is just a trusting victim here, but other than those on his considerable payroll, they were hard to find anywhere near room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building on this cold, rainy day. Clemens was doomed from the start, crushed by sworn affidavits and repeated under-oath testimony from Pettitte and his wife Laura ? almost unimpeachable witnesses ? who not only backed up the words of former trainer Brian McNamee, but blew Clemens? own stories out of the water. Congressmen Henry Waxman of California and Elijah Cummings of Maryland double-teamed Clemens early, and no amount of ensuing sympathetic lawmakers, McNamee creepiness or Clemens campaign speeches could bail him out. ?I found McNamee very credible,? Waxman said after the hearing. ?I thought what he said had a lot of credibility.? Clemens is almost assuredly going to face federal perjury charges after he continued to stick to a story that stood in stark contrast with repeated under-oath testimony of everyone else. Once the Pettittes ? and former teammate Chuck Knoblauch ? backed McNamee?s word over Clemens?, this was no longer about he said, he said. This was he said, everyone said. ?You understand you?re under oath,? Cummings kept asking Clemens, almost dumbfounded that the pitcher could be so brazen under oath. What else could Cummings do? It was stunning to watch Clemens hang himself, trying to worm his way out from under Pettitte?s testimony. ?I?m looking for an independent source to tell me what to believe,? Cummings said. ?There are a number of things that make (Pettitte?s) testimony swing the balance over to Mr. McNamee. And a number of them come from your own words.? It was one thing for Clemens to attack the credibility of McNamee, who has his own ethical issues, but Pettitte testified not only about his own drug use. Just for honesty?s sake, he admitted a few more things, and thereby became unassailable. Clemens could only offer that Pettitte must have ?misheard? or ?misremembered? the detailed account Pettitte gave about Clemens telling him that he took HGH. But he had no answer for the fact that Pettitte?s wife, in a sworn affidavit, said that her husband told her of the conversations at that time and the stories haven?t changed. It was a double barrel shot of destruction, the Pettittes asserting that their close friend was now not just a cheat, but a liar. Clemens had nothing, just pathetic ramblings about how he was a great American for pitching at the Olympics, how if he was guilty of anything it was ?being too nice,? and throwing everyone from his agents, to his mother, to his wife under the bus of blame. According to Clemens, this was just one big conspiracy, apparently. But he looked like a guy who?s been surrounded by yes men for decades, someone so removed from reality he figured he could come to Capitol Hill, talk loud, and everyone would nod and leave him alone. Only a couple of our most inane lawmakers bought any part of his nonsense defense. His factual arguments were particularly ridiculous. He claimed Pettitte must be confused, because if Pettitte really thought Clemens had used HGH, he would have come and asked Clemens about the drug before taking it himself. But Pettitte did think Clemens was using HGH and didn?t discuss it with Clemens. Cummings pointed out the failed logic behind that argument. Only to have Clemens repeat it a couple more times. When Clemens claimed McNamee lied to save himself from prosecution, Cummings pointed out that McNamee told Pettitte about Clemens? drug use in 2002, which means he would have been predicting the future. How is that possible? ?I don?t know,? Clemens said. It was all he had, like a struggling pitcher waiting for a bullpen to come save him. ?It?s hard to believe you, sir,? Cummings said. ?It?s hard to say that; you are one of my heroes. But it?s hard to believe you.? And Rep. Mark Souder after the hearings: ?I found Clemens almost as believable as Rafael Palmeiro.? The lengthy hearings were predictably foolish and distracted at times, unnecessary tangents explored for no apparent reason. In classic Washington fashion, things occasionally broke along partisan lines. Somehow Republicans and Democrats around here can?t agree on anything, even the circumstances surrounding the formation of a ?palpable mass? on Clemens? backside. Clemens? best moments came when McNamee was skewered for his tendency to lie ? mostly to newspaper reporters. But even that was Washington gumption; the idea that politicians should lecture anyone about telling the truth is absurd. The most vocal grandstander was Rep. Dan Burton of rural Indiana, who absolutely skewered McNamee. ?This is really disgusting,? Burton said. ?I don?t know what to believe. I know what I don?t believe and that?s you.? Strong words from a guy who while cheating on his wife knocked up his girlfriend and went years without visiting his son (though he was kind enough to cut him some checks). But that?s America and this is its pastime. One of Clemens? chief problems was he was fighting on difficult ground. The contested points of his story centered on whether he took performance enhancing drugs, whether he told people he took them, whether he participated in witness tampering and whether he changed his under oath stories. These all were the heart of the matter here. For McNamee, the debate was about whether he accurately remembered whether Clemens was at a party at Jose Canseco?s house, a fairly unimportant detail, or whether he told tales in the newspapers, which is not a crime. Clemens could never counter why McNamee was telling the truth about Pettitte and Knoblauch, but lying about him. Or why Pettitte was lying at all. ?Andy would have no reason to (lie),? Clemens said. ?He?s my friend.? Since everyone here acknowledged that one side must be lying and no one thought it was Pettitte, guess who that left with a self-imposed, ill-fated and unnecessary perjury charge on the horizon?
It's not that he was better at 35 than he was at 25 (although you can probably make a case that he was) it's that he was terrible at 31,32,33,34 and then left the Sox and became DOMINANT.
He did get better. Like I said, if you compare 1993-1996 and don't see how he was better in the ensuing years... That's exactly what I told him. I think he wants a Powerpoint presentation with slides and graphs.
Not exactly. But close enough, and I understand you are too busy counting your virtual money to put together slides and graphs. Still, his first two seasons with the Yankees were anything but dominant, and his first two seasons with the 'stros are at least partially attributable to switching to the easier (for pitchers) league. Some of you youngsters will learn that life begins at 35. Long after you've stopped taking drugs of choice.
He was credible yesterday, and admitting that he told prior untruths actually helped his credibility. He gave straight answers yesterday under oath, while Rogah did not.
Jim Rome just tore into Dan Burton. Burton was the guy that ripped McNamee about lying and stuff. Burton has quite a history of his own.
