Rocket Juice

After the Storm
I've been avoiding the baseball steroids stuff. For no other reason than it makes me feel dirty just to talk about it.

I have mixed feelings about steroids. I mean I understand the outrage by parents who don't want their kids to follow their "heroes" and juice up. But on the other hand, I've seen and heard and read enough to seriously wonder if steroids are as bad as they're made out to be. I mean last week even, the New York Times' George Vescey mentioned Lyle Alzado in a cautionary tale column about the downside of steroids. Alzado, for those of you don't remember that the Oakland Raiders were once in Oakland and that John Madden was once a coach, was the gregarious, hard-living face of the Just Win, Baby Raiders.

He is also one of the first professional athletes to publicly acknowledge steroid use. He claimed that his addiction to steroids, begun in the late 1960's, led to his contracting brain cancer, which killed him in 1992 at the age of 43. For many years, Alzado has been the poster athlete against steroid use -- use them and you will die. But the truth is more complicated and even though his personal physician repeatedly said that steroids had nothing to do with Alzado's illness, the myth lives on. Even, apparently, the mind at least one NY Times columnist.

The cheating part of steroids irks the hell of me which only serves to highlight my particular naiveté, one shared by many other sports fans and that is that sports is the last arena where competition is mostly fair, where character and heart are revealed in sometimes starkly simple ways. Don't sorry, I have that other, more cynical side of me too. I know that baseball tacitly approved steroid use at a time when it needed fans more than it needed to give players piss tests. I was happy, in fact, when the Mitchell Report, for the most part, did not take prisoners, particularly among the upper echelon of baseball officials. Names were named for better or worse, no matter who they were or how good they turned out to be for their cheating - or even if their uniform was a business suit.

One of those names is Roger Clemens, the fire-balling, hot-headed Texan who many consider to be among the top five pitchers ever to play in the big leagues. Like another famous accused steroid user, Clemens has vociferously denied using steroids. Indeed, he has mounted a relentless campaign to clear his name, which was muddied by the accusations of his one-time personal trainer who claims to have personally injected 'roids into Clemens' ass.

This coming Wednesday, Congress is getting involved as the House Oversight Committee is holding hearings on steroid use. I'd like to say right now that these hearings are a perfect example of an issue where Congress doesn't belong. It seriously boils me that my tax money is paying for a hearing that isn't necessary and in fact, is more likely to turn into a public relations photo-op for the Congressmen involved. I bet attendance will be 100 percent.

And yet, in the weeks leading up to this ridiculousness, has not been devoid of juicy details, if you'll pardon the pun.

I would argue that Clemens, who has assembled an expensive, high-class defense team, is not getting his money's worth. He's either a complete and utter egomaniac who is blind to reality or he is getting the worse legal advice in the history of the world.

After all, Clemens went on "60 Minutes" and denied steroid use even though right after the report was released his bestest baseball buddy, Andy Pettitte, was shared Clemens' trainer and was also accused by him, admitted to using steroids. Then last week, Clemens was one of several people subpoenaed by the House to give sworn depositions about this week's testimony. Which, by the way, he did. Can we all stop and spell stupid?

Giving a sworn deposition to Congress is the same as in a court of law. If you are caught lying under oath to Congress, it's a felony punishable by up to five years in jail. I mean, duh. When Clemens' accuser Brian McNamee produced used syringes (along with other alleged evidence) he claims have traces of both steroids and Clemens' DNA on them, it put the seven-time Cy Young Award winner in a serious, serious situation, one that could end up with him pitching in pinstripes.

(Let me talk for a moment about these alleged syringes. Lots of folks have wondered why the fuck McNamee held onto them years after he claimed he used them on Clemens. I mean it's not like he could sell them on eBay. I don't pretend to know why and a part of me thinks it's all too convenient to be The Smoking Gun, but if it's really true, I have a guess as to why he kept them. I think McNamee was close enough to understand who Clemens is and he was worried about his future. The general feeling about the Rocket around baseball is that he wasn't exactly the world's nicest guy. Ornery, tough, a little bit of an asshole at times and while loyal to a small group of his insiders, tended to be aloof, a guy who looked out for Number One. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's probably a pretty good self-defense mechanism for a guy as big and as great as Clemens. The way he pitched, living on chin music in an era when most pitchers shied away from throwing inside, you can understand his "me against the world" mentality.

It's possible few people really understood this part of Roger's ego, than McNamee, his long time trainer, confidante, friend. I mean who knows an athlete better than his trainer? A guy you see every day, who knows all your imperfections (literally), who has pushed you to the breaking point and held your hand beyond it?

Maybe McNamee was afraid that Clemens wouldn't protect him, if the shit ever hit the fan, that Clemens would not have his back, that in fact he might sell his ass down the river to protect his own legacy. Or maybe he didn't want to be his Greg Anderson. Maybe he thought that Clemens might have to be convinced to pay for his silence or that he would never be convinced to pay up or maybe he didn't think he could stomach the lies and was afraid his old friend and boss wouldn't understand. So maybe, just maybe he saved those syringes for that rainy day when he would he would be left twisting in the wind. I have no idea if this is true but don't tell me it's not a reasonable theory. )

Back to the present.

Tonight, word comes out that Pettitte, who also gave a sworn deposition last week, has asked to be excused from testifying. Speculation is that he may have implicated his old friend in the depo and doesn't want to make the situation worse by saying it in front of the world. And he won't have to testify according to reports which now say only Clemens and McNamee will be giving testimony at the Wednesday hearings. If y'all aren't feeling dirty yet, this ought to seal it.

Things are looking very dicey for Clemens about right now. Give the guy credit for facing the music but this all feels like he's protesting way too much. Everybody on his team is claiming he never took steroids, even as the evidence seems to be mounting with every vehement denial. It's been one public relations disaster after another. Can it all be unseen forces out to ruin a star's reputation?

Indeed, Clemens has a lot to protect. His legacy for one. His getting voted into the baseball Hall of Fame but now his reputation -- added to the mix by the Rocket himself. What if it comes out that he really did do steroids now? He might have been able to admit it two months ago and survive, but now that he's stuck with his story so vehemently, going back now seems like an impossible mountain to climb. I'm not sure even Checkers could save him now. It's possible the damage to his legacy might even be beyond repair.

I never thought I'd be watching these hearings but I admit I'm thinking about it now, especially now that Roger Clemens has turned himself into the tragic figure (or unrealistic egomaniac) at the center of this brewing storm.

One guy who must be okay with all this is Barry Bonds if only because nobody's been talking about him much lately.

All Hail the (True) Home Run King

Sunrise and Sprinklers. Healdsburg, CA 2007
I have few sports heroes. I mean I’m just as awed as the next person when an athlete does something amazing when the game is on the line. I know you’re thinking, it’s not life and death. It’s not what doctors and fireman and cops do, it’s not like a crazy, incredible act of bravery by a special person.

Yeah, it’s not important in the every day life-and-death sort of important, but at the moment it’s happening, it’s big, it’s huge, it’s the most important thing to the players involved and a lot of the people watching. Maybe it’s manufactured pressure, but it’s effect is real and lasting and at the moment it’s all happening, it’s freaking huge. I think people like me love sports because of the purity of the way it tests your character. And your nerve. You do or you don’t. You are or you aren’t. Him vs. you. Win or go home.

So yeah, I respect the great ones. Jordan and Bird and Magic. Schilling and his bloody sock. Mookie’s grounder. Willis Reed limping into the Garden. Kirk Gibson’s one-legged homer. Laettner’s buzzer beater in ’92 . Great moments to talk about and rehash and be awed that in their one moment to shine, these guys stepped up and came through, their characters were revealed, they won.

My years spent as a sportswriter soured me a little on sports heroes, mostly because I got to know many of them and, well, whose idol doesn’t get knocked down a few pegs when discovered that they’re actually human?

Not Hank Aaron.

He was big sports hero when I was a kid. I came of baseball age when he was past his prime but still hitting home runs. I got my baseball batting stance from pictures in a book about Aaron that I read over so many times, the pages fell out. And later, when I met him briefly as an adult (I interviewed him for a story), he was everything I hoped and imagined. True, he was guarded and reserved (as he’s always been with the press and other outsiders) but also a gentleman who was patient with my questions and pointed in his comments (he was speaking out for more African-Americans executives and managers in baseball) and, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, my obvious and somewhat fawning admiration. I may be the only girl who ever told him that she copied his batting stance.

Aaron has always been a quiet man who did not seek or want the public attention that rained on him in the summer of 1973. It was not a record everyone wanted Aaron to break. Besides the bigots who sent hate mail, there was an undercurrent of baseball people who felt Aaron, who never hit the benchmark 50-home run mark, was worthy of breaking the great Babe Ruth’s record.

But without boring y’all with his statistics, Aaron was easily one of the best players in the history of the game, not merely a tremendous hitter. Besides winning three Gold Gloves as an outfielder (during a generation that possibly saw the greatest outfielders in the game), he led the league multiple times in hits (twice), RBI (four times), and homers (four times). He finished his career with the most total bases, RBI and extra-base hits in addition to the hallowed home run record.

That last record – the most career home runs – is about to be broken which ought to be the story in sports this summer but it’s turned into something else. Something dirty and embarrassing and tawdry. This is because Barry Bonds, the man who is about to surpass Aaron on the all-time list, while arguably the greatest hitter of our generation, is also widely considered to have, for some of those home runs, been helped out by a regimen of steroids.

Bonds has never explicitly tested positive for steroids as far as the public knows and he has vehemently denied knowingly using them. He has been connected to steroid suppliers and in the 2006 book, "Game of Shadows," the authors accuse Bonds (and others) of juicing and then covering their use with a host of masking agents.

I have been very much on the fence about what is now being referred to as baseball’s ‘steroid era’. Part of my ambiguity rests in the clear and tacit approval given the steroid users by Major League Baseball which until a former player revealed baseball’s worst kept secret, didn’t do a thing to get them out of the game. I have no doubt some baseball officials even wanted players to juice because they wanted more home runs. More home runs, it was hoped, would bring more fans to ballparks and in the aftermath of a contentious strike that had caused the World Series to be canceled and so alienated the fan base that there was a fear baseball would never recover, putting butts in seats was apparently more important than regulating against cheaters.

My thinking then was that if baseball wasn’t banning ‘roids, than Bonds and everyone else who’s been accused of taking them, wasn’t doing anything against the rules. After all, we've had players admitting to stealing signs and throwing spitters and even playing drunk.

So with all this circulating in my head, I’ve been thinking about Bonds and this record all winter, thinking about what I would write, working through my thoughts on the whole subject. I had not as of yet settled on how I felt, that's how much of a battle was raging in my brain. That was before yesterday, when I turned on ESPN and saw the face of my hero staring back at me.

Aaron, who has refused almost any interview on the subject of Bonds breaking his home run record, was quoted this week in he Atlanta-Journal Constitution as saying he would not be on hand when Bonds goes number 756.

"I'd probably fly to West Palm Beach to play golf," Aaron told Journal-Constitution columnist Terence Moore. "Again, it has nothing to do with anybody, other than I had enough of it. I don't want to be around that sort of thing anymore. I just want to be at peace with myself. I don't want to answer questions. It's going to be a no-win situation for me anyway. If I go, people are going to say, 'Well, he went because of this.' If I don't go, they'll say whatever. I'll just let them make their own mind up."

Thanks to Aaron, I’ve made up my mind. I think it speaks volumes that he’s not acknowledging the record, that he seems to be saying that he believes, as do some other legends, that Bonds didn’t get to the record legitimately.

Being up here in Northern California, I’ve heard a lot from Barry Bonds apologists (on the public airwaves and off), how he’s just the poster child for steroids, how he’s not the only one, just the one guy everybody’s focusing on. How prior to his superhuman burst of home run power (he's hit 360 homers, a little less than half his total since the age of 33), his numbers put him among the top hitters in baseball ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever Bonds is getting from his critics, he has only himself to blame. Anyone who cries over “poor Barry” ought to remember who started this whole thing in the first place.

I’m reminded of the day I watched Aaron break Ruth’s record, how those two fucking moron fans ran onto the field and tried to circle the bases with him until they were tackled by the cops. I hate those two idiots. I hate that they stole Aaron’s shining moment, ripped it from the nicest, classiest guy ever and every time I watch it again, I want to scream at those assclowns. What right did they have to mar a moment this man spent half his life earning? Fuckers.

Now I think Bonds is doing it to Aaron again. He’s stealing the crown from the king. I hope Bonds doesn’t break the home run record. But if he does, it won’t matter to me. The King will always be the king.