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January 07, 2008

Is Clemens Warning MLB?

"I was eating Vioxx like it was Skittles" - Roger Clemens, last night, on 60 Minutes

I keep thinking back to this quote from Roger Clemens...and it makes me think about Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker and what happened in 1926. Here's the story via ESPN.com -

1926 - Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were permitted by Ban Johnson to resign from baseball near the end of the 1926 season after former pitcher Dutch Leonard charged that Cobb, Speaker and Smoky Joe Wood had joined him just before the 1919 World Series in betting on a game they all knew was fixed. Leonard presented letters and other documents to Johnson, and Johnson thought they would be so potentially damaging to baseball in the wake of the Black Sox scandal that he paid Leonard $20,000 to have them suppressed. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis exposed the cover-up and the eventual fallout forced Johnson out his job as president of the league he had created. Cobb and Speaker vehemently denied any wrongdoing, Cobb saying that "There has never been a baseball game in my life that I played in that I knew was fixed,? and that the only games he ever bet on were two series games in 1919, when he lost $150 on games thrown by the Sox. He claimed his letters to Leonard had been misunderstood, that he was merely speaking of business investments. Landis took the case under advisement and eventually let both players remain in baseball because they had not been found guilty of fixing any game themselves. It was after this case, though, that Landis instituted the rule mandating that any player found guilty of betting on baseball would be suspended for a year and that any player found to have bet on his own team would be barred for life. Cobb later claimed that the attorneys representing him and Speaker had brokered their reinstatement by threatening to expose further scandal in baseball if the two were not cleared.

I wonder if Clemens made that "Vioxx" statement as a warming shot to baseball - in the sense of "I know just as much about your house as you claim to know about mine. And, if you're going to drag me into something, I'm taking you with me."

Do you think the guys in Washington would want to hear about how baseball teams allowed their trainers to give out pills like candy? It's possible - and, I think Clemens knows this too.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Roger is pulling a Cobb/Speaker move here to get "the man" off his case. It's possible - and, if true, not a dumb move on his part. After all, it's always about having leverage - and who has more, no?

And, if anything, in this whole thing, Clemens is showing that he's not afraid to fight back.

Posted by Steve Lombardi at January 7, 2008 09:03 AM

Comments

I don't think the Vioxx mention was premeditated, although it is an interesting suggestion. As early as February 2005, the NYT ran an article about Clemens heavy use of Vioxx. If anything, I think the Vioxx claims give credibility to the lidocaine claims. It seems as if Clemens has relied on pain killers as he has gotten older. I wonder if that's something you'd expect from a steroid user? Shouldn't steroids fortify the body against needing pain killers, at least in the short-term?

Also, Clemens made another credible claim about not exhibiting any of the telltale injuries that we see in other known steroid abusers. Do we just ignore this, or does it deserve any weight in his defense?

Posted by: williamnyy [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2008 09:42 AM

Do you think the guys in Washington would want to hear about how baseball teams allowed their trainers to give out pills like candy?
=================
One would think the guys in Washington have read "Ball Four"

Then again, maybe not...

Posted by: Raf [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2008 09:46 AM

If multiple players had similar information that could potentially embarrass MLB, why didn't the MLBPA make an effort to assemble it, and then use the leverage it might afford them to attempt to negotiate an investigatory process into the PED era that would afford the players the type of due process that they believe the Mitchell report lacked?

Posted by: Rich [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 7, 2008 11:05 AM