As Roger Clemens increasingly resembles a terrible caricature, he definitely is a guy in need of major-league advice, and not from his lawyer Rusty Hardin who has given him some absolutely horrendous advice in 2008. So, here goes.

 

“Dear Roger,

It’s been tough. Didn’t you read my advice blog to you last December? All you wanted was fame and adoration, and instead you get all this junk heaped on you. Actually, in your ’60 Minutes’ interview you said that you didn’t want fame, so I guess you just wanted adoration.

Roger, you’ve been getting some horrendous PR advice from Rusty Hardin. He might be good in the courtroom, but he’s causing you to get hammered in the court of public opinion.

So, here’s some advice which I really think you should take to heart. Think about it for a bit. I know you have time because you’re supposedly retired until you un-retire.

First, hire someone good who will objectively look at all the interviews and other public statements you’ve made since the Mitchell Report was released. You must straighten out all the inconsistencies. Even the simple ones are going to make you look like a liar.

Here’s an example. 5 days after the Mitchell Report was released, you said that you were just “numb” to the accusations but that your wife Debbie and your sons were devastated by it. That’s fine. But if that was your original statement, you’ve got to stick to it. You say you’re numb one moment, and then during the ’60 Minutes’ interview, you say that you’re really upset that you don’t get the benefit of the doubt from the American public after pitching for 24 years?

You say that your family is crushed by all of this, and that’s entirely understandable. But then in the phone call with Brian McNamee that you secretly taped and released, you first said that your wife and kids are “numb” about the whole thing, then you later say that they’re a mess.

Get your story straight. Wouldn’t it just be easier to say that you and your whole family are upset about the whole situation? Isn’t that what an innocent man and his family would feel in your situation?

Second, if I were you, I’d seriously reconsider appearing before Congress. If you are 100% innocent, then appear before them and waive your right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. If you have nothing to hide, then you have now way of incriminating yourself, so you won’t need to invoke it. But doing it at the very beginning without any prompting from anyone will really get people on your side.

But if you did use steroids or HGH, there is absolutely no way I would appear before that Congressional committee. You’re going to have to swear to tell the whole truth, and if any smoking guns come out later, the very next thing you’re going to have to buy is soap on a rope. It’s too risky.

Third, use some common sense, okay? It’s bad enough that you look super-sleazy for secretly tape-recording your most recent conversation with McNamee, but it’s far worse that he never recanted anything AND then you released it.

Do you know what a bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking sneaky miscreant you look like now? And the worst thing is that you set up the call on the pretext of his ill son. Roger, the American public does not like people who use critically ill children as pawns for their own personal gain.

Releasing that tape was a humongous mistake. Try to use some better common sense. I’m sure that Rusty Hardin told you to do that, but it was a terrible thing to do. If you’re going to do something so sleazy, you have to make sure that he says something along the lines of, “Roger, I’m sorry I lied about you using steroids and HGH. You never did that stuff, but I felt like it was my only way out of the situation.”  Anything, and I mean anything less than that should be discarded.

Fourth, do me a favor and find out which hospital little McNamee is at and make sure that you send a generous check over there to cover his hospital bill. Why? Because it will help your image. It will make it seem like you actually do care about people other than yourself.

I don’t know if you do care about others outside of you and your immediate family, but at least you can project that image.

Doing something generous covering little McNamee’s hospital costs will help mitigate the negative fallout against you because of that taped conversation.

Let the public know or think that even though you’re really upset with Brian McNamee, you’re not going to punish his ill son for the sins of his father. That will get you a ton of goodwill mileage.

Fifth, have your wife appear by your side. Roger, when a man’s wife doesn’t appear with him, it gives the appearance that he is 100% guilty. If Hilary Clinton’s crocodile tears a day before the New Hampshire primary can swing the election to a suprising victory for her because now voters think she has a heart, then Debbie’s real tears might do wonders for your image.

And for God’s sake, if you are going to shed some tears, don’t suddenly revert back to your normal ornery self 7 seconds later like Hilary Clinton did. You might want to listen to the woman who asked Hilary Clinton the question which induced/allowed the tears to flow. She said that she didn’t vote for Hilary in that New Hampshire primary, because 7 seconds after Clinton got all teary-eyed, she suddenly resumed her normal harsh, didactic and condescending manner.

Learn from history.

Sixth, call Joe Torre and ask him for some support. People respect Torre as a guy who tells it like it is. The fact that he refuses to stick up for you makes people think that you’re guilty.

Seventh, if you are going to appear before Congress this coming February, I’d strongly urge you to start finding ways to dig up or manufacture prescriptions for the lidocaine and vitamin B12 that you supposedly injected into your body. While you’re at it, you also might want to get some written prescriptions (preferably backdated) for all that precription Vioxx that you admittedly “ate like Skittles”.

While you’re at it, you better find someone who is great at secretly hacking into your local drugstore’s computer records and altering them so that it seems like you actually filled your prescriptions there.

Trust me, if you walk into that Congressional hearing without any prescriptions, you are going to get roasted. The fact is that lidocaine, injectable Vitamin B12 and Vioxx all required prescriptions at the time you said you were taking them. Without having a paper trail here, you are going to regret ever using that as an excuse on ’60 Minutes’.

Eighth, if you had someone supplying you with steroids and HGH, you better make certain that they will keep their mouths shut. Only an #### drug dealer would publicly out you, but you never know what kind of crazy money is being offered out there for anyone who has proof that he/she sold you those drugs.

Ninth, if possible talk to Andy Pettitte. If he even hints to the Congressional Committee that he knew you were doing steroids and/or HGH, your credibility is destroyed. Why? Because his credibility is almost as high as it could be due to his admission of HGH use.

Tenth, if you are innocent and you know of baseball players who have used steroids, you’d be best served by giving up some of those names to the Congressional Committee. There are a lot of people out there who think that one of the reasons so few MLB players have publicly spoken out against steroids is because the vast majority of them have tried or are now using steroids. Giving some names will deflect some of the attention away from you. Just make sure that you don’t lie about who was doing the steroids.

Eleventh, between now and your mid-February meeting with Congress, really try and lose some of your bulk. Even if you have to starve, just do it. If your eyes look a bit sunken, even better. Make it look like this whole situation is taking a massive toll on you. That will get you some sympathy. Also, being slimmer and trimmer will make you look less like a steroid user.

Finally, I know that you like to work out, but you must not even think about exercising with any guys named Mark McGwire or Jason Giambi, and definitely now is not a good time to be hanging out with guys from the WWF. We call that “guilt by association”.

 

So, good luck, and I hope that everything works out, but even if it doesn’t, just remember that you still have your Cy Young Awards, World Series rings, family, and your millions of dollars. Most people don’t even have one of those things.

- Divine”