Wow, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee have become the most entertaining male pairing since Felix and Max in the "Odd Couple". Accusations, secretly taped conversations, a deathly ill child, and lawyers working on both sides to outmaneuver each other. Whew, what drama!!!!!!!

I'm writing this piece a year ahead of time, because I already know how this is going to play out.

My greatest prediction for Major League Baseball (MLB) in 2008 is that none of this steroid/HGH stuff is going to matter. People will still shell out big money to go to Red Sox games and league attendance records will continue to be broken, especially if Colorado Rockies fans ever decide to support their team on a full-season basis.

We live in a hyperstimulated age. Everything has to be flashier and brighter than it was previously. I just saw an ad for EPT (yes, the Early Pregnancy Test) and now the device comes in 4 different colors. That must be for people who want to put a small chain on it and have it dangle from their purses and knapsacks. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have spent big money to jazz up their labels in order to sell more soda because they just want to keep America well-hydrated. Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii are looking for new and exciting ways to suck even more people into the gaming world. Despite the fact that America faces an escalating weight epidemic combined with increased costs for grains like corn and wheat, fast food restaurants are still trying to find a way to super-super-size everything.

If you still don't think you're being hyperstimulated, then try playing a game of "Doom" or "Call of Duty" on your computer for a few hours. It's an experience that will give you a bizarre cyberworld form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Do you know what MLB's biggest worry is? What if it does clean up the game and suddenly instead of seeing teams score an average of 4 to 6 runs a game (note: the worst team in 2007 the Washington Nationals averaged 4.15 runs per game) the average drops to only 2 or 3 runs a game?

This is the same problem that the NFL wrestled with years ago and their solution was to skew the rules to give the offense a major advantage. Don't believe me? How is it that a ball carrier's initial forward progress can be stopped by the defense at the 50-yard line, and then he can literally be pushed forward 50 yards into the opponent's end zone for a touchdown, but he can't be pushed backwards 50 yards for a safety?

Baseball needs people to actively chase records in order to compete in today's hyperstimulated world. The fans want to see guys like Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees tickle 100mph on the radar gun. Heck, they want to see him hit 110mph. The fans want to see someone break Barry Bonds home run record, which means that we're all in the unenviable position of having to root for A-Rod.

The fans want to see baseballs flying out of the park at a record clip. In today's hyperstimulated world, I guarantee that many of today's fans love to see a 2-1 game, but only when it's sandwiched between an 8-6 game and a 10-4 game.

Folks, the steroid scandal is not something new. Anyone who has followed baseball for a while knows that steroids have been an ongoing problem. But unlike a baseball strike, the fans don't outwardly react by boycotting games. Do you think that people will decline to renew their box seats at Yankee Stadium because Andy Pettitte or Roger Clemens used steroids and/or HGH?

And when you add things like the rising popularity of fantasy baseball to the mix - a nice cheap way to suck even more people into following multiple MLB teams - then it's in MLB's best interest to keep up the big offensive numbers. Heck, defensive numbers aren't even used for the fantasy baseball league scoring systems that I've seen. That shows you where the priorities are.

Some people might point to the NFL as an example of how to be tough on steroids and yet keep the scoring high. After all, a record 11,104 points were scored this season in the NFL. That's an average total score per game of 43.4, the highest in the past 25 years.

The problem is that the NFL has latitude in its rules which allow it to create more scoring. In fact, there are still certain rules which the NFL could tweak to increase scoring even more. But baseball doesn't have this ability. The tie already goes to the runner and the strike zone couldn't be any narrower than it already is. How could you possibly generate more runs in baseball? 

So, here is the major conflict that MLB has to face: how does it clean up the game without becoming BORING. For a league that is clearly focused on the bottom line of revenue generation, becoming boring and obsolete to the public is a far greater threat than steroids ever could or will be. That is MLB's real battle. And fortunately for baseball, you have a lot of top-notch chemists out there who are currently working on or may have already developed the next undetectable anabolic agent. You have the MLBPA which will do everything possible to prevent any testing above the minimal amount it allows now. In the end, both of these groups will keep baseball exciting.

Some or many of you reading this may strongly disagree. You might even think that baseball is on its deathbed. You couldn't be further from the truth. Baseball is alive and will thrive next season.

The truth is that the very population that baseball is trying to attract - the 10- to 24-year old crowd - is not all that interested in whether or not players are using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. Older people might care, but in today's America, people of all ages are trying to be cool and younger, and this oftentimes means following where the younger generation goes. Don't believe me? Look at all the people over 50 years of age who now have iPods. As long as offensive numbers are up, people will continue to go to the ballpark and/or keep buying team merchandise. You know it, I know it, and most importantly MLB knows it.

When a star player like Roger Clemens openly admits to receiving multiple injections of painkillers like lidocaine and Toradol and ingesting prescription Vioxx likes they're skittles and no one associated with MLB blinks or thinks that it's concerning, then I know that there is not a lot of impetus to change anything. If you think that steroids should be banned for giving players an edge, then why not also ban prescription painkillers as well? Anabolic steroids may give some players who take them an edge, but big-time painkillers allow the majority of players who take them to get on the field and compete. Which do you think has a more immediate and important role for players in terms of daily performance?

In the end, real and comprehensive changes in the way MLB handles steroids, HGH, and other performance-enhancing drugs will only happen if fans make a statement by turning their backs on the game, but in today's hyperstimulated world that's not going to happen, because if fans do this then they might miss the next massive home run.

For some reason it's tough liking the NY Giants. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I'm from Boston. But that can't be the answer, because it's not like the Giants have been rivals with the Patriots. In any event, if I see a game on TV with the Giants, it doesn't matter who the opponent is, I just root for the other team.

But now the situation has changed a lot in just a couple of weeks, and it's pretty much because of Tom Coughlin. Coughlin is a former Boston College coach, who is legendary for his strict disciplinarian style.

What Coughlin did against the Patriots 2 weeks ago was meaningful in several ways:

1) he risked injury to key players in a game that had no bearing on the playoffs (both teams had already clinched their spots)

2) he obviously walked into that game thinking he could win (even though his team had barely won against some lower caliber teams)

3) he unnecessarily played his starters with potentially catastrophic ramifications in the postseason if any of them were to be injured, and he did this with his job is in jeopardy if he were to lose in the first round of the posteason

 

Maybe Coughlin was crazy. A lot of announcers before the game, and definitely Chris Collinsworth throughout most of the Patriots-Giants game, thought that Coughlin was stupid for playing the game as if it meant something.

When a former player like Collinsworth repeatedly calls the game "meaningless" while broadcasting it, you know there's a problem with the NFL.

The idea that only the playoffs count is wrong. It's also completely at odds with the other mantra we hear and love to recite about "taking it one game at a time".

A lot of sportscasters were saying that we had to wait until seeing the score of the Giants first-round playoff game to decide if Coughlin's decision to play his starters against the Patriots was correct.

To quote a well-known baseball pitcher, "That's hogwash!"

Whether the Giants won or lost the game against Tampa Bay, Coughlin's decision to play his starters should have garnered him a tremendous amount of accolades, especially knowing that injury to key starters in the final game of the 2007 regular season and losing in the first-round of the playoffs probably would have cost him his job.

In short, he tells his players to fully dedicate themselves to each play and that's the way he coaches.

When true fans - and I'm not talking about fans who still think that the tackle box in football is where football players keep their bait - start viewing the regular season as just a prelude to the postseason, we've got troubles. When true fans start looking at the NFL as more of a chess league and less as a sports league, we've got troubles.

A lot of people out there think that if the Patriots go anything less than 19-0 this season, then the season will be a failure. Hogwash. Many Giants fans probably also feel that if their team had been defeated yesterday, the season would have been a failure. Also Hogwash.

For true fans of the NFL who like to see teams fighting tooth and nail every game, don't get sucked into this idiocy about the postseason. NFL players get paid a lot of money to play as many downs as physically possible. Fans pay a lot of money to see their teams give their best effort each week.

If I were a Colts fan and saw them lose the last game of the season because Tony Dungy sat down Peyton Manning for the entire second half, I'd be upset.

And here's the really strange thing in pro sports: if an NBA team loses on purpose by not putting their starters on the floor in a "meaningless" late season game, then people go beserk, but somehow it's okay to do this in the NFL?

I'm not against the idea of a coach resting key players on the team, but at least make sure that you win the darn game.

That's why I've got to root for the Giants for a while. Coughlin made us remember why we devote our time to watching the game: because it's still a game of heart.

He may not have the best coaching record, he may lose his next playoff game, and he may still lose his job, but no one can accuse him of quitting on his team or the ideals of playing one game at a time.  

Also, I have to give a lot of credit to the Giants players. They also had a major role to play in Coughlin's decision to play his starters during the Patriots game. And they played like a team that is a contender the past two weeks.

So, as the Giants prepare for Dallas, I'm left saying a previously unthinkable thought: Let's Go Giants!!!!!!

 

How did Roger Clemens do in his '60 Minutes' interview aired last Sunday night? Dead on arrival.

I was worried about Mike Wallace tossing softballs at Roger Clemens. This seemed to happen.

Some people would say that Clemens looked uncomfortable. I don't think that's accurate. He looked like a guy who was trying to prevent himself from spitting out the answer before the question was asked. He looked like a hitter who somehow knew exactly where and what the next pitch was going to be.

This is the reason that a guy like Steve Kroft would have been a far better choice. Clemens controlled the entire interview and Wallace let him get away with it. Judging from the interview, it seemed that Clemens was provided with the questions ahead of time. That's why Clemens had supposed copies of emails to him by Brian McNamee four days before the Mitchell Report was made public. Those emails supposedly asked Clemens to borrow some fishing gear. And for many people, they had exactly the effect that Clemens and his attorney wanted: to portray McNamee as a sleazebag.

At times Clemens seemed very credible. Part of the problem is that he has a classic problem of age: ptosis (drooping eyelids). Ptosis has a way of making a lot of people look less than truthful. But interspersed between his moments of credibility were a lot of moments that just didn't ring true.

Here are some of them:

1) Wallace asked Clemens about not appearing before the Mitchell Committee when invited. Clemens said that he was advised by his lawyers not to do it, and then he said, "If I had known what was in the report, I would have been down there in a heartbeat."

Sorry, but that explanation seems flimsy. Why would he be told not to go there? Sen. Mitchell was clear that he contacted Clemens and others named in the report to give them a chance to respond to allegations against them. For Clemens to say that he didn't know the purpose of the meeting is a lie.

Also, maybe I'm idealistic, but if Clemens had nothing to hide, then why decline the opportunity to meet with the Mitchell Committee? One possible explanation is that Clemens was advised by his lawyer that if he met the Mitchell Committee, it would have been leaked to the media, but if he didn't go then maybe Mitchell would not include the allegations in his final report. If that's the case, it was a gamble, and Clemens lost big-time.

"If I had known what was in the report, I would have been down there in a heartbeat." How does this explain the fact that Clemens waited a full five days after the Mitchell Report appeared to defend himself? Here's the problem: if that happened to any of us, we would be screaming as loudly as possible about 2 minutes afterwards. It just rings hollow.

 

2)  McNamee injected him with lidocaine and Vitamin B12 for joint pain.

On a previous post a few days ago, I said that this should be a central part of the interview by Wallace. It wasn't. Maybe it's because Wallace doesn't know enough about lidocaine and Vitamin B12 to ask the right questions. I guess that also means that he didn't read my blog here. Heavy sigh...

What really should have happened is that Mike Wallace should have had a knowledgeable doctor at the interview to ask Clemens a few pointed medical questions. That most likely didn't happen because '60 Minutes' does not have its reporters conducting interviews with a third-party specialist present.

But if the goal was credibility, Wallace should have told Clemens that the interview would be taped in 2 days. The first day would be devoted to hearing Clemens describe/justify things, and the second day would occur after a doctor had gone over Clemens's responses to Wallace's questions.

The problem is this: lidocaine and Vitamin B12 may not have been illegal according to MLB's rules, but lidocaine and injected Vitamin B12 require a valid prescription from a doctor. Who gave Clemens those prescriptions?  Clemens opened the door for this line of questioning.

Also, his reasons for using them are questionable. Injecting lidocaine into your butt to help you with joint pain? Which joint? His hip joint? Using lidocaine for systemic (whole-body) joint relief is not common medical practice. And even in cases where it has been used, the deltoid muscle of the shoulder (he could have used his non-pitching one) is a far safer place to inject it. If he had joint pain in his knees or shoulders, then the use of lidocaine seems like a very odd choice.

As for Vitamin B12, yes, there are people who think that it helps them, and there are also a lot of medical professionals who feel that Vitamin B12 deficiency might be more common than is reported. But they suspect it to be more widespread in the elderly population who might not be ingesting a lot of food (mostly meat and dairy) containing Vitamin B12. But Vitamin B12 deficiency in a younger guy like Clemens who has been known to eat a hearty steak every now and then would not even be on a doctor's radar screen unless Clemens was a raging alcoholic or he heavily used acid-blocking medication such as histamine H2-receptor blokers or proton pump inhibitors.

If Clemens was really in one of these categories, then he should just say that he has a medical condition and provide the evidence to Major League Baseball. Otherwise, he's just substituted one possible federal crime with another.

 

3) Toradol (ketorolac)

Clemens brought up his use of Toradol in the interview. Toradol is a non-steroidal antiinflammatory, antipyretic and a pain medicine. It's very effective. But according to his interview, he was using both lidocaine and Toradol?

I'm sure that no team doctor or other licensed doctor would have written Clemens a prescription for lidocaine because of its risk of central nervous system effects even at low doses (tremors, dizziness, blurred vision, seizures, etc.) and negative effects on a person's heart and blood vessels at higher doses (sedation, decreasing your drive to breath, stopping your heart, etc.). It's just not the kind of symptoms you'd want any guy - especially a pitcher - to have.

 

4) "I was eating Vioxx like Skittles"

When I hear an argument like this and Clemens then blaming people who gave him Vioxx and talking about how he might have heart damage from it, I think of one word: smokescreen.

Clemens decided to play, even when his body was screaming at him to stop. If you want to talk about steroids giving people an edge, then you have to also include things like Vioxx and Toradol. At least with steroids the user has to put in some effort to get results from the drug, but Vioxx and Toradol don't even require that kind of effort. They just have to be placed in a person's body.

Introducing Vioxx was a major indication that Clemens was trying to drum up sympathy and possibly to deflect Mike Wallace from focusing on the lidocaine and Vitamin B12, because I'd bet a lot of money that if Wallace had asked Clemens for the names of the doctors who prescribed and injected the lidocaine and Vitamin B12, Clemens would have been tongue-tied.

 

5) "I didn't play to get fame or go to the Hall of Fame."

Roger, do you really expect us to believe that? It's a good thing you weren't hooked up to the polygraph (lie detector machine), because you may have caused the stylus to fly right off the paper.

 

6) "If I was using steroids, then why didn't I break down earlier? Steroids turn your tendons to dust."

This is deception and an attempt to prove his innocence by appealing to the general public's ignorance about anabolic steroids. Brian McNamee specifically told Sen. Mitchell's group that he had injected Clemens with Winstrol (Stanozolol). This is an important detail.

The use of an anabolic steroid like natural testosterone has been reported in animal studies to result in stiffer tendons and a higher failure rate compared to control animals who were not injected with testosterone. Other anabolic steroids are associated not with weakening tendons, but rather with increasing strength of the muscles attached to them to the point of mechanical overload which leads to failure/destruction of the tendon. However Winstrol, a synthetic anabolic steroid, actually has been shown to induce changes that strengthen (not weaken) tendons and ligaments. That is why it is one of the anabolic steroids of choice for athletes.

 

7)  "If I was injecting with steroids and HGH, then how would I get the needles?"

Answer: you'd get them the same way that you got the syringes and needles for your seemingly illegal lidocaine and Vitamin B12 shots.

 

8) "Why would I want to do things (steroids) that would limit my flexibility?"

This is again an attempt to try and play on the stereotypes of anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids taken regularly for long periods of time have the possibility of making someone "muscle-bound". But using lower doses of steroids could reduce muscle breakdown without necessarily causing incredible increases in muscle mass.

This brings me to another criticism. Why did '60 Minutes' not dig up photos of Clemens during different stages of his career? Regardless of whether or not they show a difference, I think that for any other athlete in this situation in this situation, showing a progression of pictures would have been the norm.

 

9) "You'd think that after 24 years, people would give me the benefit of the doubt."

Roger, your record over that 24 years and the interesting surges of excellence as you got older is exactly the reason that people suspect you in the first place. You should know that.

 

After watching the Clemens interview, I realized why lawyers always tell their clients to shut their mouths: because people who lie tend to tell more lies to cover the previous lies, and eventually people realize that it just doesn't sound right.

There are a couple of things that Clemens said which were credible:

1) Clemens said, "The higher you get up on the flagpole, the more your butt shows."

I'm sure that even Clemens head lawyer Rusty Hardin had to wince at that comment. For a guy who's been accused of dropping his pants and getting injected with steroids and HGH in the butt, it was an incredibly poor choice of words.

But there is a lot of truth to it. People are jealous. That's why it's lonely at the top. That's also why people in high places have to make sure that they rigorously screen those around them.

 

2) His comments about taking a polygraph test.

A lot of people would say that Clemens did not clearly answer the question about whether or not he would take a polygraph test.

If he has misgivings about doing it, he's well within his rights. The test is not perfect, and he really has nothing to gain by taking it. If he takes it and passes it, then his critics will say, "That's just part of Clemens's pathologic lying personality. He'd probably be able to say that his name is not Roger Clemens and still pass it."

I think that for a guy with a strong resolve, tons of incentives to pass the test, lots of money to hire "coaches", and the proven ability to be cool under pressure makes Clemens fits the ideal profile of someone who could beat the test. 

Some of you have already gone to YouTube and seen Roger Clemens posted video. You may also have seen the clips of his upcoming '60 Minutes' interview. If I thought Clemens looked guilty before, he really looks guilty in the brief snippets from the '60 Minutes' interview. Roger, didn't your attorney Dusty Hardin tell you not to blink at the very moment you are trying to "tell the truth"? Didn't he tell you not to take your eyes off the interviewer at that same moment?

Certain things have already been leaked, such as Clemens saying that the injections were lidocaine (an anesthetic) and Vitamin B12. So, for those of you who will watch the interview, here are a few questions that you should see if Clemens answers clearly, because these are questions which licensed doctors advising MLB about Clemens veracity (or lack thereof) will be looking for:

1)   Did Brian McNamee ever inject Clemens with steroids or anything else? Clemens denies this on his YouTube bit, but he seems to be saying something different on the clip I saw of his '60 Minutes' interview. Such a contradiction of this kind of major item could completely destroy his credibility. Also, he needs to be careful because McNamee may be holding a trump card: Roger may have some sort of very small identifying mark on his buttocks which only someone looking very closely could see. If Clemens has such a mark, denies that McNamee ever gave him gluteal injections for anything, and McNamee correctly describes the mark, then its game over for Clemens.

2)   Did Clemens ever have dermabrasion of his butt or any other plastic surgery in recent years (i.e. within the past month) to erase identifying marks.

3)   For what condition has Clemens been using lidocaine injections into his butt? This is not a common practice these days due to the side effects of lidocaine injected this way. Maybe he needed it because he strained his gluteus maximus or minimus while squatting?

4)   Lidocaine is a Class VI drug. This means that he needed a prescription to use it. Does he have proof that he had legal prescriptions for this? And if so, who prescribed it and who was injecting him with it? Only a trained medical professional should be doing that because of the risk of damaging the sciatic nerve. For more systemic anesthesia, a far safer and more efficacious place to inject it would have been into the deltoid muscle of his non-pitching arm.

5)  Vitamin B12 injections are also only legally available with a prescription (the oral form at lower doses does not require a prescription). Does he have legal prescriptions for this? And again who was injecting him? Where was he getting injected? Unless he had clearly diagnosed Vitamin B12 deficiency as revealed through a blood test, there is not a single responsible medical doctor who would inject him with it. Maybe he has pernicious anemia, maybe he has a gut malabsorption problem. If he wants to save himself, he has to reveal this, because otherwise his use of injected Vitamin B12 looks illegal according to federal law.

6)  Has he ever been prescribed any of these things by an online dentist?

The last thing which is extremely ominous in Clemens situation is that Joe Torre, as loyal a guy as there is to his players, refuses to stand up for Clemens. If Torre really felt in his heart that Clemens was innocent, don't you think that he'd be the first baseball person to stand by Clemens's side? There's only one logical reason why Torre would not support Clemens: he knows or strongly suspects that Clemens is not telling the truth and he doesn't want to be part of the lie.

There is a large part of me that wants Roger Clemens to be innocent, but so far his explanation is only marginally more believable than the story that Indians pitcher Paul Byrd told the public about his "legal" HGH use. And trust me, that story made absolutely no sense to anyone in medicine.

In the end, no one may ever be able to prove that Roger actually did steroids or other PEDs, but unless he can come up with some really good and documented medical problems on the '60 Minutes' interview, his reputation will most likely be damaged forever.

Has anyone seen the show "Sports Science"? The premise of it is interesting: try to give a scientific explanation for things that happen in sports.

Episode 3 featured Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger where they broke down different parts of his play. It was well done, and it's hard to watch it without being impressed. You want to see a big linebacker move quickly? Watch that episode and see how fast Luis Castillo gets to Big Ben. It takes Ben 1.5 seconds to do a 3-step drop and 1.2 seconds for Castillo to get off the line of scrimmage untouched and get to him. Truly impressive.

However, Episode 4 was crazy. The goal was to put some type of science into a cheap shot to the groin. This is a case of overkill, because all of us watching already knew in an instant what it would take science a bit longer to demonstrate: it's otherworldly painful.

So, they paid $50 to a 24-year old amateur stunt guy to stand in front of a tennis ball machine that spits out balls at 50 mph, and the goal was to let him get hit in the gonads. He was standing about 10 feet away from the machine. He also was not wearing a cup. The goal was to see how his pulse rate changed as he anticipated getting hit and then how fast his heart was beating immediately afterwards.

The results? Just prior to getting hit, his pulse moved from 72 beats per minute resting to 142, and then after he got hit, it raced to 182.

Right after he got hit, he couldn't stand up (for obvious reasons) and the paramedics had to help him.

Guys like him give other guys a bad name. How the heck are guys supposed to prove that they are an intelligent gender when someone like him volunteers to potentially destroy any chance of having future children? And all for a mere $50??????

For any of you who watched closely, can you tell me how the stunt guy cheated to make the demonstration genetically safer and less painful than it could have been for him? Trust me, if he had gotten hit dead center, he would have either passed out or started vomiting.

 

As for some of the other stuff in the show, they did a good piece on getting hit in the head with a major-league beanball: finding, it causes damage. They also compared someone getting hit in the face by another player swinging a hockey stick or a bat. Finding? Both cause damage but the bat is much worse by about 80-fold.

However, the scenarios for both hitting a person with a bat and a hockey stick were unrealistic. For the bat, the test dummy was stationary and the batter ended up swinging at the dummy's head like he was playing T-ball. I don't know a lot of MLB players who are going to just stand like a statue and get their faces bashed in by some bat-swinging maniac (refer to Jose Offerman in 2007).

The hockey stick blow to the face was also a bit incomplete as the guy applying the blow was completely stationary.  It also didn't account for the potentially concussive effects of the recipient as he falls and his head bounces off the ice.

Still, the show is interesting with a lot of cool graphics. Take a look at it if you have the chance.