Roger Clemens vs. Barry Bonds
Democratic Congressman and 2009 New York Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner thinks Roger Clemens has already suffered enough and that the FBI should drop it's investigation into whether or not Clemens perjured himself in front of Congress.
While I think Clemens is a complete ass, and as Tom Verducci pointed out recently in Sport Illustrated, probably actually believes he never did anything wrong (as George Costanza once said "It's not a lie if you believe it"), and should be ashamed of himself for throwing everyone he knows, including his own wife, under the bus, I really don't care if they drop the investigation of him. I think the FBI should have more important things to worry about than Clemens and the thought of him going to jail for essentially being an asshole seems a bit extreme.
My issue with Weiner's comments is this - Has Barry Bonds not suffered more than Roger? Or how about Marion Jones for that matter? Why does Roger get to get off when Jones is going to jail and Bonds is being investigated for the same perjury charges (I know taxes are an issue for Bonds as well but people are gunning for him because he is a jerk like Roger)? I think the honest answer to that question is because Roger is white and Barry is black.
The race issue is not one I gave a lot of credence to until recently but one I am starting to acknowledge has a much bigger role in this than I thought. I'm a white male (not an angry white male) so I don't always think I have the same outlook on this as a guy like Dave Stewart might. I use Stewart as an example because not only did he dominate Clemens head to head (a point I love bringing up to Clemens fans)but also because he spoke out about this recently. As he points out, and as I have pointed out for as long as I have had this blog, Bonds and Clemens late career surges are virtual mirror images of each other yet Clemens was never suspected of using steroids, or at least not by as many prominent writers.
It's going to be very interesting over the next little while to see how the fallout from the Mitchell Report goes and who else will be targeted by Congress.
posted by Skeelo @ 10:31 AM
2 Comments:
So you think it's a case of the media treating Bonds like a black arsehole (race first, attitude second) than an arsehole who happens to be black (with a 20-year record of such behaviour behind him)?
Contrast with Clemens who, prior to this, hasn't ever had any major controversies as far as I can remember.
The other thing is that Bonds broke what is arguably the most hallowed individual record in sports and did it while cheating. Clemens won what ... a couple Cy Youngs? An accomplishment, to be sure, but no all-time home run record.
Not sure the race conclusion is the right one to draw.
I'm not stating unequivocally that race is the issue, I am saying it plays a bigger role than people are willing to admit.
And Clemens has always been an arrogant ass and anyone who has ever covered him or played with him will tell you that. For some reason they just don't report what a dick he is the same way they do with Bonds. The only controversy Bonds has really had is that he's an arrogant jerk too. He's had some messy divorces but that's hardly controversy these days.
As for the record Bonds broke, yes he did cheat. But Clemens' win total of 354 has many people putting him as the greatest pitcher of all time (while nobody is stating Bonds as the greatest outfielder of all time). 162 of those wins came after he left the Sox in '96 and starting juicing in 97. To me what he did is exactly the same as what Bonds did and I would like to see him treated the same way.
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