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 idiot 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"

For people who think that this year's New England Patriots aren't the best team to ever step on an NFL field during the regular season, let's look at the records they've broken in the 2007 regular season:

Team Records:  

19          Most consecutive regular-season victories (dating back to 2006)

16-0       Most regular season victories

589         Most points scored in a season

73           Most TDs in a season

23           Most TD passes between the same passer and receiver (Brady to Moss

8             Most consecutive wins by 17 points or more to begin a season

+315       Greatest point differential in a season

551          Most points cored through first 15 games

523          Most points scored through first 14 games

503          Most points scored through first 13 games

469          Most points scored through first 12 games

442          Most points scored through first 11 games

411          Most points scored through first 10 games

 

Individual Records:  

 

Junior Seau:  oldest player with 2 or more interceptions in a game (Browns 10/7)

 

Ellis Hobbs:  longest kickoff return in NFL history (108 yards vs NYJ on 9/9)

 

Randy Moss:     23    most TD receptions in a season

                           4       most consecutive 100-yard games in first season with a team

 

Tom Brady:    50    most TD passes in a season

                      12       most games with 3 or more TD passes in a season

                      +42  highest TD-INT differential in a season

                       158.3 highest single-game passer rating (10/21 v. Dolphins)

                       10   most consecutive games of 3+ TD passes to begin a season

                       20   most TD passes in a month (Oct)

                         4   most consecutive game with completion % of at least 75%

                        79  most completions in first 100 passes of a season

                        38  most TD passes in the first 10 games

                        33  most TD passes in first 9 gmaes

                        30  most TD passes in first 8 games

                        27  most TD passes in first 7 games

                        21  most TD passes in first 6 games

                       

 

Well, 2008 has just begun and it proves to be a wild one. Roger Clemens has almost singlehandedly started the year off with a bang. And if I were Roger, the fact that Congress is pushing back its hearing with him, Andy Pettitte and Brian McNamee almost a month (from January 16th to February 13th) is an ominous sign. Clemens' head lawyer Rusty Hardin responded to the news by saying, "Roger hasn't done anything. The federal government looking at Roger is fine with me."

At this point, if Hardin really feels that way, why not publicly declare that Clemens will not invoke the Fifth Amendment (the right not to incriminate oneself) during the hearing? Trust me, after the whole Mark McGwire debacle in Congress, if Clemens ever wanted to get the undecided sports people onto his side, waiving his Fifth Amendment right would be a heck of a way to do it.

What will probably happen is that the hearing will be abnormally uncomfortable for Clemens. He's going to be grilled not only about steroid and HGH use, but also about his supposed lidocaine and vitamin B12 injections, as well as his own stated Vioxx abuse. He's going to be grilled about various things he has said in public which just don't line up with what really happened. He's going to have every interview he ever gave lined up to show where he says something in one interview and then contradicts it in another.

And he's going to be skewered for setting up a call to talk about McNamee's son as a pretext for trying to entrap McNamee and get something to bolster his own case. What it demonstrates is that he'll do anything to win, and that's probably as good a reason to guess that he did steroids and HGH as any. Honestly, now Clemens is going to understand why lawyers want their clients to say as little as humanly possible.

So we move from that stupidity to the Golf Channel suspending anchor Kelly Tilghman for two weeks. Why? Because she complimented Tiger Woods by saying that his game is so dominant that the only way that other players could possible hope to challenge Woods would be to "lynch him in a back alley".

I know that the word "lynch" has some very negative historical connotations. But does Tilghman deserve a two-week suspension? The Golf Channel deserves a lot of blame for picking her to be the first female golf anchor. Maybe they did it as an affirmative action move, but there are very very few people who think that she got there on merit. And her most recent comment demonstrates that she's far from a polished anchor.

Let's be honest, a big reason she was picked is because she's very attractive and athletic looking. Don't believe me? Heck, why did they not groom Nancy Lopez for that position? Lopez has 47 LPGA victories and was inducted in to the World Golf Hall of Fame at age 30. She's far more qualified than Tilghman will ever be. But Nancy has one disqualification: she's not as attractive as Tilghman. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.

Still, I think Tilghman's suspension is ridiculous. She apologized in a sincere manner to Tiger Woods and the viewers. Shouldn't that be sufficient? If she had slandered Woods, then it would be an entirely different story, but the irony of it all is that she's being punished for actually complimenting his superb golfing abilities. What I kind of wish would happen is that Tiger Woods would take a break from protecting his image and do the right thing: call a press conference and/or write a letter to the Golf Channel that pleads with them to not suspend her.

Tilghman didn't cheat or lie or steal, she just made a mistake. That's all it was, and when we get so touchy that even the smallest mistake (in this case a single word) followed by an immediate and public apology is given a two-week punishment, then instead of having announcers and anchors who are passionate about sports and life, we're going to have a bunch of corporate guys who measure every word that comes out of their mouths.  Is that what we really want?

Some people might vilify both Tilghman and Clemens as two terrible people. Even if we ignore all the accusations against Clemens, it's tough to condone his taping of that conversation with McNamee which was expressly supposed to be about McNamee's ill son. Tilghman might be stupid, but Clemens taping that conversation was just plain wrong. That makes Tilgham and Clemens like 2 peas in 2 different pods.

Rescind Tilghman's suspension. I think she's already learned her lesson.

Who here is tired of college football hypocrisy? Players can't receive gifts during the regular season, but they can receive up to a $500 gift for bowl games? We talk about protecting their "study time", but we have the title game on January 7th?

Now we hear that the President of the University of Georgia is pushing for an 8-team playoff format? Even if his system is adopted and the bowls serve as a 1st-round game, we're talking about prolonging the season further.

With all the bowl money out there, schools that are not in the top 8 or 10 annually will not agree to something like an 8-game playoff.

Here are the current problems:

1)  time - the post-season is already too long.

2)  fairness - too much controversy if there is no clear #1 and #2 from the regular season

 

Solution: "bowl + 1" format for the top 4 teams. However, the semifinal bowl games should be played around December 18th (before the start of the bowl season), and the national championship will keep its current time (around January 7th). The top BCS bowls can rotate to host the semifinal and final games.

 

This solution achieves a lot of objectives:

 

1) time - the post-season will not be extended beyond the current system

2) exclusivity - the semi-final round will have exclusivity (and fantastic ratings) because it will be played at a time when no other bowls are scheduled to play.

3) convenience - the other bowls do not have to alter their schedules

4) fairness - we improve the chances that the real #1 team in the country gets to play for the national title

5) incentive - the system provides incentives for teams to play hard until the very end of the season.

6) compromise - assuming that there is no increase in the number of bowls next year, this system would mean that only 2 fewer teams than this past season will get to play in a bowl game.

7) better competition - the current long layoff between the end of the regular season and the national championship has to make players rusty. Ideally, with this system, I would suggest playing the national championship game on January 4, 2009 (a Sunday) for maximum exposure, less time off, and it saves the athletes a few days.

 

Why the 8-team playoff will meet resistance:

 

1)  time - even if the bowl games were used for the first round, it would still extend the season another week, and not only is that unfair to the athletes, but it also is a bit hypocritical to talk about the importance of protecting their study time while further decreasing it.

2)   let's imagine that we monkeyed around with the current bowl system and we used 4 bowls to play the quarterfinal round around December 25, 2008 (a Thursday), then another 2 bowls to host the semifinal round around January 1, 2008 (a Thursday), and then the naitonal championship was held around January 7, there would be problems:

 

a)      Mid-level schools lose out - it would mean that 4 teams in the nation who under the current system would be playing a bowl game will not do so (because the semifinal bowl games will get the winners of the quarterfinal bowl games)

b)      Devaluation of non-playoff bowl games - the non-playoff bowls would scream bloody murder, because having playoff games competing directly with their own bowl games would devalue them.

c)      Deprivation of money to 4 universities - College presidents who look forward to collecting bowl money would not be in favor of a system that each year would deprive 4 colleges of much-needed bowl appearance money.

d)      Decreased Incentive - The last problem is one that we see in the current NFL playoff system: teams that have clinched are more likely to rest their starters at the end of the season. With the current systems, every team has to play hard throughout the last game of the season, because no one can be sure how the ranking system will place them in the end. But with 8 teams making it to the playoffs, the top 2 or 3 teams have more incentive to rest their players for the final game of the season, because as long as they place in the top 8, they will still have a chance to chase the national title.

 

 This solution is a win-win for everyone.

I like the ideal of "innocent until proven guilty". I also like the idea that people honor the contracts they sign, but we all know how binding that seems to be for pro athletes. Maybe the public is being too hasty in judging Roger Clemens, but he's contributed heavily to a lot of his own problems. After reading several blogs here, there are things which require a general response for everyone who is supporting Clemens.

 

Assertion #1:  Roger Clemens has done everything correctly in dealing with this steroid/HGH mess.

Comment: Clemens has NOT made all the right moves, and that's despite the fact that he has a high-profile attorney and a whole group of attorneys below Dusty Hardin guiding him. He's a bit too late with his denials. Do we really believe that he didn't meet with the Mitchell Committee because he didn't know what they were looking at? Do you think they called him and said, "Roger, we need to talk with you but we can't tell you why until we see you face-to-face?" Highly doubtful. There are only two possible reasons he didn't meet with them: his lawyer told him not to for fear of possible self-incrimination, and probably because his lawyer Dusty Hardin probably needed more time to review the situation.

In the '60 Minutes' interview, Clemens used excuses like "Where would I even get the needles and syringes for the stuff?" My guess is that he probably would have gotten them from the same place that he got the needles and syringes for his supposed lidocaine and Vitamin B-12 shots. Just an fyi, you can't just press the bottles containing that stuff onto your ass and pray for absorption. Where are his prescriptions for those needles and prescription drugs? If he has no paper trail for those, then of course he's probably not going to have a paper trail leading to the steroids. Clemens might be a lot of things, but he's not stupid enough to pay for his steroids with a personal check or credit card. And what would be the incentive of his steroid suppliers to step forward and be prosecuted themselves?

 

Assertion #2:  Clemens filiing a lawsuit while McNamee hasn't supports his claims of innocence.

Comment: This does not suggest anything, except that Dusty Hardin is looking for ways to try and convince the public that Clemens is innocent, and that Clemens has the deep pockets to fund those efforts. Also, at least Clemens has potential grounds for defamation of character, but Clemens has been very careful about what he's said about McNamee. So, does McNamee really have enough solid ground to file a lawuit against Clemens? Once again, that's why the rich get high-profile attorneys and get the upper hand.

Second, the only way that a penniless McNamee is going to file a countersuit is if his lawyers (now working pro bono) really feel that there is a solid case. In a case like this which is one man's word against another, the burden of proof in a McNamee countersuit would be on McNamee to prove that Clemens has been lying. If he had that kind of solid proof, don't you think he would have already handed it over to the feds?

 

Assertion #3:  Clemens waited to respond because he was being a good friend and giving McNamee a chance to recant.

Comment: Some may look at Clemens tardiness in defending himself as a man in turmoil that a close friend has betrayed him. Some might say that a strong bond of loyalty has prevented Clemens from going on the counterattack earlier. Let me give you a different perspective on Clemens's tardiness. What if the reason he waited so long to respond was to make certain that no smoking guns would pop up later? If I were guilty, the first thing I would do is to try and plug any potential leaks in my future story. That takes time.

Some might say that Clemens has been a loyal friend and that's the reason he hasn't attacked McNamee until now. Do you really believe that after the Mitchell Report came out Clemens still considered McNamee a friend? If your close friend publicly destroyed your entire reputation as well as damaged your family, would you still consider him/her a friend? Would you secretly tape a conversation with a friend in hopes of trapping him?

 

Assertion #4:  Clemens appeared on '60 Minutes' which proves that he has nothing to hide.

Comment: That '60 Minutes' piece wasn't exactly a hard-hitting interview. It was just providing Clemens with a large forum to say he's innocent. Also, admitting that he was abusing strong prescription painkillers is not exactly a smart way of convincing us that you didn't abuse other drugs.

Did Clemens appear angry during the '60 Minutes' interview? Yes. But I also believe that Clemens is a control-freak, and so he and his legal team spent days doing mock interviews. You don't really think that Dusty Hardin let him go on camera without any preparation, do you?  I think that making such a big deal about the potential heart damage he could get from abusing Vioxx (a prescription painkiller) was planned to garner sympathy and show everyone what a tough cookie Clemens was and how he was a team player. What Clemens' legal team probably gambled on (and won) is that the American public would be so focused on the issue of steroids and HGH that they wouldn't question whether Clemens had been abusing painkillers. A 65-year old person with severe ostearthritis who needs high-dose painkillers just to do basic functions of everyday life is far different than a 40-year old who just wants to pitch one more game.

 

Assertion #5: McNamee must be a sleazeball if he could rat out Clemens and then later ask to borrow his fishing gear.

Comment: If you watched the '60 Minutes' interview, Clemens ruffled a sheaf of papers which supposedly had an email sent by McNamee four days before the Mitchell Report was issued. In that email, he allegedly asked to borrow Clemens's fishing equipment. I say "allegedly", because we never saw the document, and Mike Wallace didn't say anything to confirm that he had actually read it either. Anyways, I would rather look at the actual email itself on Clemens' computer, because then I can be more sure that it wasn't altered.

That whole part of the interview was yet another reason why Clemens is difficult to trust. He said that at that time he (Clemens) had no idea about what McNamee had told the Mitchell Committee about him. And he used that email from McNamee to portray McNamee as a sleazebag with a lot of chutzpah who would stab a close friend in the back and then borrow something from him a short time later. And guess what? If you just believe that part of the interview, then McNamee does look like sleazy.

What Clemens failed to tell everyone is that he had spoken to McNamee four days prior to that email at which time McNamee told Clemens about his testimony to the Mitchell Committee. We know this from Clemens's own lawyer Dusty Hardin who was left in the unenviable position of having to publicly contradict Clemens's earlier statement that he had not had any contact with McNamee prior to the release of the Mitchell Report.

Here's a common sense question. Do you think that during their conversation 8 days before the Mitchell Report was released that Clemens said, "Brian, you're a complete sleazebag and a rat, and never call me again!" and then 4 days later McNamee sends him an email asking to borrow his fishing equipment?

Does that even remotely make sense? More likely, McNamee told Clemens about the testimony and Clemens said not to worry because no one knew if that part of McNamee's testimony was going to get into the final report. My guess is that they ended that conversation on fairly friendly terms, and that is why McNamee sent him the email for the fishing equipment. But that's the part of the story that Clemens most likely left out.

It's probably the same reason why McNamee would even agree to meet with 2 private investigators (Jim Yarbrough and Billy Belk) hired by Clemens' attorneys. That meeting occurred on December 12th, the day before the Mitchell Report was released. There's no doubt about that meeting or who funded those private investigators because Clemens signed a document acknowledging that those guys work for his attorneys. If Clemens really didn't know what McNamee had told the Mitchell Committee, then why would he have his investigators meet with McNamee at that time?

And again all of this makes one wonder, "If Clemens knew that far in advance about McNamee's claims against him to the Mitchell Committee, then why didn't Clemens and his lawyers whip up a denial to release to the media just in case his name was in the Mitchell Report?

Also, parts of that December 12th interview were used to file Clemens' lawsuit against McNamee, but now we find out that the interview in its entirety tells the story not of an untruthful McNamee, but rather of a meeting set up to force McNamee to recant and McNamee insisting that he had told the truth. Basically, Clemens' lawyers filed a lawsuit based on a soundbite. And we all know how misleading soundbites can be.

 

Assertion #6: Clemens worked hard for his success and everyone knows this.

Comment: I'll be the first one to say that Clemens worked hard. I'll also be the first one to say that steroids or HGH optimally help those who exercise hard.

When you look at some ominous signs in this whole Clemens-Steroids mess, one very noticeable thing is the nearly absolute lack of other players who have come to his defense. There have been a couple. But Clemens had a lot of teammates during his tours with several teams.

Where is then Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson? Oh yeah, he's still in exile for lying about his Vietnam War service record. Where is Joe Torre? He declined to back up Clemens. That is a telling statement because everyone who knows Torre says that he's a very honest guy who sticks up for his players. Why has he taken a pass on commenting about Clemens' situation? Ominous...

 

 

Conclusion:

There are some people in Clemens' corner, but not many of them are from Boston.

We've seen him do a lot of great things here, and it's a shame that he didn't win a World Series Championship here.

However, we've also seen a lot of the half-truths that he tends to tell.

Clemens has said multiple times about how he doesn't want to do anything to be disrespectful towards baseball. That doesn't include the way that he ignored new manager Butch Hobson during their first spring training? Does anyone remember the famous scene of Hobson trying to talk with him but Clemens refusing to listen and instead focusing on the music pumping through his walkman?

Boston fans will also remember Clemens emphatically saying in 1996 (his final year with the Red Sox) that he wasn't chasing the money but rather trying to win a World Series Championship before the end of his career. At that time Boston had wrapped up another season of not making it to the playoffs and being 7 games out of 1st place in the Eastern Division. Who won their division? The Yankees, and Baltimore came in second. Toronto was in 4th place (out of 5 teams) and 18 games out of 1st place.

For those of you not in Boston at the time, the city was split. Some viewed him as a traitor for wanting to leave the Red Sox, but there were also others, including several prominent sportswriters, who felt that Clemens had already given a lot to the Red Sox who at that time weren't in a position to contend and so he should be allowed to go to the team that gave him the best chance for a World Series Championship.

So where does Clemens go to chase after his World Series ring? Toronto. In the end he went there because Toronto offered more money than the Yankees. Toronto then finished dead last the next year in 1997 (22 games out of 1st place). The Yankees offered less money, but were perennial contenders and had just won the World Series in 1996. What better team to go if you want to have the best chance of winning a World Series Championship? Do you see why it's difficult for people to trust Clemens?

The last thing to point out is that Clemens is not a guy without money. He isn't now and he wasn't then. Professional baseball players have access to the best medical teams in the world. Even if he's telling the truth and he was getting lidocaine and vitamin B-12 injections in his apartment, does that really seem like something he should be doing without the knowledge and approval of team doctors? It's the same question I often wonder when a pro athlete gets caught and says that it was a supplement. Why wouldn't a player who has a lot to lose in terms of money and fame protect themselves from potential accusations by running everythinig by the team's medical staff? Maybe it's laziness, maybe it's stupidity, or maybe it's just something a whole lot more sinister.