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On Saturday the New York Times reported that the FBI was looking into a possible connection between Clemens and a Houston-area fitness facility with apparent ties to HGH and steroid distribution. The owner of the health club, Shaun Kelley, denies any involvement with the drugs and claims limited interactions with Clemens. The two solid facts in this story are (1) a 20-minute meeting between Clemens and Kelley witnessed by a former employee and (2) the admission of lawyers connected with the FBI probe that Shaun Kelley Weight Control is now part of the investigation into Clemens testimony.

Upon reading the article it struck me that this piece is strung together by a lot of weak evidence. Clemens is allowed to have a meeting with whomever he likes, whether that person is the Pope or a convicted felon. Shaun Kelley is neither one as far as I can tell, and I see no problem with being acquainted with him. The Time story is instructive only insofar as it shows where the FBI investigation is headed.

The real reporting gold star for this case goes to Henry Waxman’s aides. At his behest, they put together a document citing seven contractions between Clemens testimony and the evidentiary record. For instance, Clemens claims that Andy Pettitte misunderstood him in 1999 or 2000 when they spoke about HGH use. Pettitte remembers Clemens discussing his use of HGH. Clemens stated that Pettitte must have misheard; the conversation was about Debbie Clemens’ use of the drug. But according to the record, Debbie Clemens didn’t begin taking HGH until 2003 or 2004, at best three years after the “misremembered” exchange. Maybe Clemens is clairvoyant and was predicting his wife’s future drug use for Pettitte?

Another gem from the Waxman document is the investigation into an abscess on Roger’s rear in 1998. Brian McNamee contends it developed after a steroid injection he administered. Clemens disagrees, saying it resulted from a B-12 injection. The medical record does not state that Clemens received any B-12 injection although the Blue Jays team physician remembers administering one to Clemens around that time. But the most damning fact is that no one would admit that the abscess could likely have been caused by a B-12 injection. According to the report:

“Mr. Craig [the Blue Jays trainer] told the Committee that he had never seen a side effect like Mr. Clemens’s from a vitamin B-12 injection in almost 30 years as a trainer.”

Seems pretty hard to swallow Clemens’ story then. But at least a few congressional republicans are doing so, according to Newsweek. It’s for their sakes that I hope the FBI probe is quick and decisive.

On Friday, Barry Bonds’ grand jury testimony from 2003 was unsealed by order of the judge in his perjury and obstruction of justice case. The big news, according to ESPN.com, is that the testimony revealed a previously unknown positive test for steroids.

After reading through the document, I was struck by the attitude Bonds took towards his embattled former trainer Greg Anderson. Bonds describes in vague terms how he and Anderson, who had been childhood friends, reconnected in 1998 after decades apart. Here is Bonds’ account of why he decided to ditch his former trainer in favor of Anderson:

And I like Greg’s philosophy. Because my other trainer was, like: You do three sets of legs, three sets of this, three – you know. And Greg is more: 16 sets of chest, more biceps, to really maximize and expand your muscle. And I liked that philosophy. And I admitted that.

And I just believe people are experts in their – you know, in each of their fields. I have a running coach, I have a stretch and flexibility coach, I have a strengthening coach. I just believe people are experts in their field, and there’s not a one shop stop, that’s all.

From p. 16 of the Bonds Testimony

Am I supposed to believe that Barry Bonds had a personal trainer who didn’t push him physically? All it took for Anderson to add Bonds to his client roster was to tell him to do more reps? Seems a little suspicious. But Bonds is known for being moody and mercurial so it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which he simply grew tired of his old trainer.

Stranger is the picture Bonds paints of his trusting ways. As the case now stands, his defense is essentially that he never knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs despite having tested positive for them on two occasions. In essence, this position relies on the idea that Greg Anderson or one of his associates administered these drugs without Barry’s knowledge—a stretch to say the least. The notion that Bonds “just believe[s] people are experts in…each of their fields,” helps explain why he could be so easily taken advantage of by Anderson, but the gullibility it implies is hard to buy, especially for a man with a famously prickly demeanor.

Where have I heard sentiment like this before? From Roger Clemens, of course.

During the contentious session on Capitol Hill, Clemens was asked to explain how he could have fallen into associating with a fellow like McNamee who held himself out as a doctor after having earned a Ph.D. from a diploma mill. USA Today credits Clemens with this response: “I’m a forgiving man he told me he had a Ph.D.” Roger just trusts McNamee on his word? This isn’t some incidental business; this is the task of maintaining a professional athlete’s most important asset, his body. Someone of Roger Clemens’ experience and expertise should have known better. Could he really have been that foolish?

Clemens’ evident lack of judgment is something I’ve heard called into question in various ways over the past few weeks. David Kaplan of WGN Radio in Chicago in an interview with Todd Hollandsworth brought up another good question:

What bothers me about this whole Clemens thing is here’s a guy who had to have earned $150 million. What is he doing having his—this isn’t the trainer of the club or the team doctor, it’s a guy, who he’s helping lift weights with, injecting him. What’s he thinking?

Even if McNamee only injected B12 and lidocaine into Clemens, as the pitcher contends, why would he have let someone without medical training inject him with anything? It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

Could all this performance-enhancing drugs hullabaloo really be caused by naïve, trusting athletes?

How trusting are we willing to be?

I can’t say I’m surprised, but the Justice Department has asked the FBI to open an investigation into whether Roger Clemens perjured himself in testimony before congress last month. Also on the list of potential charges are making false statements and obstruction of justice.

This occurrence felt inevitable to me (which may be apparent from my previous posts). It takes no great mind to notice that every verifiable allegation Brian McNamee has made concerning Clemens has turned out to be correct. Chuck Knoblauch and Andy Pettitte used HGH. Debbie Clemens did as well. And there’s apparent photographic evidence of Roger’s presence at Jose Canseco’s now-infamous party. How could Congress believe Clemens even if it wanted to?

I am intrigued by those intelligent people who adamantly defend Clemens, often in guise of being objective or “agnostic” on the subject of his guilt. For me the most surprising is J.C. Bradbury of the blog sabernomics.com. Bradbury touts himself as “The Baseball Economist” and recently had his book, The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed, released in paperback. His sizable intellect is apparent in many of his posts; for instance his opposition to the new Gwinnett Braves stadium proposal is illuminating and well argued.

But last Wednesday he wrote another post that can only be described as anti-McNamee and by extension pro-Clemens. In it Bradbury suggests (though does not say outright) that McNamee may have purposefully failed to keep a ziploc bag that could have been dusted for Clemens fingerprints. It should be noted that Bradbury had to read through McNamee’s deposition transcript to unearth this irrelevant observation.

I have to ask Bradbury, what help would a plastic bag with Clemens’ prints be in this case? What attorney couldn’t easily discredit a piece of evidence as flimsy as a sandwich bag once touched by Roger Clemens? If you think the needles and gauze that may carry both Clemens’ DNA and traces of performance-enhancing drugs aren’t damning, why would you ever consider a missing baggie important? It’s all a big jumble.

So I tried to stay away from Clemens this week, but I failed. I just have to comment on the latest developments. Forgive me in advance.

It was revealed in the media this week that a picture exists of Roger attending the much-discussed party at Jose Canseco’s house in 1998. A neighbor of Canseco’s brought his son to the festivities and took photographs of the boy with various major leaguers in attendance. The father who took the photos felt obligated to call attention to them after the Feb. 13 hearing when Clemens and McNamee squared off.

I’m not sure why this party has become the focal point of the squabbles between athlete and trainer as it seems allegations of much greater substance are at stake in this case, but somehow Clemens’ side decided to use this minor detail to impeach McNamee’s testimony. It seems to me that recalling the attendance at a ten-year-old party is difficult, but the illicit administration of drugs to a famous athlete would be much more memorable. Why attack some minor detail in McNamee’s account? If he were truly lying, wouldn’t it have been smarter to leave out incidental details like a party? That would make it harder to disprove his falsehoods because there would be less invented material to use against him. But if this photo does depict Clemens at the Canseco party, this could be a terrible blow to the pitcher’s credibility.

Now word is out that Clemens may be heading to work out with Astros minor leaguers sometime soon. This information comes from Roger’s son Koby who is a catcher in the Houston farm system. Call me crazy, but I think Roger’s presence would be an enormous distraction to the players. I would be very surprised if he showed up. Plus he may have some more important preparations to do in the near future to defend his reputation.

Andy Pettitte did exactly what I’d hoped for (but was never dumb enough to expect) on Monday when he faced a group of reporters for a press conference to address his use of HGH, his relationship with Roger Clemens, and other aspects of his life post-Mitchell Report. It was a compelling event, unlike anything I’ve seen from a professional baseball player before, and it provided a catharsis of sorts to those of us willing to face the mistakes of our ballplayer heroes.

I’ll admit that before the onset of the Performance Enhancing Drugs melodrama in baseball I was never much of a Pettitte fan. This is not to say I didn’t respect him. His fierce competitive spirit is unmistakable; one look at the intensity of his eyes when he’s on the mound is enough to convince anyone. Mostly it was his presence on the World Series-winning ’96 and ’99 Yankees that irked me—my Braves being on the losing end of both contests.

Yet his frank admissions on Monday really won me over. I can’t tell for certain if he was being entirely honest, but it sure felt like he was. I felt none of the distrust from the week before when I watched Roger Clemens’ angry, evasive display. Here was a contrite man bearing his soul as best he could, trying to answer questions that have no good answers.

ESPN.com’s Jason Stark wrote a column about his impressions of the conference in which he largely agrees that Pettitte did a convincing job and praises him accordingly but also acknowledges the risks that such direct admission carries:

“[I]n doing it this way, Pettitte drew a road map for all the drug culprits of tomorrow to follow. This is how it’s done. Unfortunately for him, unfortunately for all of them, the truth won’t set them free. But it sure beats the alternative.”

Stark is referring to the questions and the scrutiny that will continue into the indeterminate future for everyone, in particular Pettitte, tainted by this scandal. This is an unfortunate truth, and one I can’t help but confirm with my next paragraph.

There was a time during the press conference when I had trouble following Pettitte’s account. This was when he claimed not to consider himself a cheater. His interpretation of his drug use is novel. His position was something like the following: since he was using HGH while injured and only seeking to hasten his recovery, the use didn’t constitute cheating. In other words, he wasn’t trying to gain an unfair advantage on the field. He just wanted to reduce the amount of time it would take to return his body to normal. But in baseball, as in all other sports, we don’t make allowances for injured players. If you’re on the field you have to compete against others in whatever state you are in. The pitcher isn’t going to throw the ball more slowly to a batter nursing a strained oblique. The batter isn’t going to refrain from driving the ball to left just because the fielder there hasn’t recovered fully from a pulled hamstring. Part of having an even playing field is accepting injuries for what they are: limitations as to what can be done. Any unfair advantage you gain when recovering from an injury is cheating in the same way that using drugs to gain a few MPH on your fastball is.

I’m glad Pettitte could admit what he did. I thank him again for his candor and hope his press conference sets a good example for those players whose drug use will be substance of future scandals. But I would still like him to admit that he cheated.

Derek Jeter can be a polarizing figure. Almost too good to be true—sacrificing his body in a headlong dive into the stands to snare a foul ball, coming through at the plate in critical situations, acting graciously toward even his critics—Jeter is beloved in New York and reviled by many others. As much as I know my own reticence to like him is founded primarily on irrationality, I still find myself ambivalent at best.

Why does he do that bothers me? Here is an example. A few months ago he was caught up in a contest over back taxes that the state and city of New York thought he owed. You can read about the intricacies of this particular situation on a tax blog I found. When I heard about a man who made in excess of $20 million dollars last year supposedly dodging taxes, I was appalled. Jeter settled the dispute a few weeks later without having to go to court, likely paying a portion of the sum that the governments were seeking. Is it wrong of him to fight for money he thought was his own? Of course not. But anytime a man worth tens of millions of dollars can’t pay a bit more in taxes, I feel a bit sick inside. And it seems to be worse when the culprit is Jeter. Can’t he just get Steinbrenner to agree to pay his taxes for him? I’m sure the Yankees could afford it.

Yet then he has a week like last week. He took a stance in favor of blood tests for banned substances in Major League players in a brief interview with the AP. This is a position opposed by his own union representative, as the story points out. But hearing a player talk this way gives me hope that baseball can clean itself up. One day I hope Jeter’s sentiment is more widely held, and that brings about an era when baseball’s integrity is considered beyond reproach. Jeter also attended teammate Andy Pettitte’s press conference in a touching show of support for a man doing the right thing, which also happened to be the difficult thing. These are the admirable qualities that make his teammates and managers and fans love and respect him.

The much-discussed Mitchell Report has been vindicated once again.  This time Paul LoDuca has issued a statement acknowledging the mistakes he has made in taking HGH in the past.  I never thought as many athletes would own up to their indiscretions as have already done so in the wake of the report. This is doubly the case because the document is based largely on the accusations of a few drug dealers. But I’m very pleased to be hearing these admissions of guilt.

I feel terrible about the damage these revelations will have on the reputations of the guilty.  I’m not thirsting for the downfall of public figures and heroes.  But cleaning up the game of baseball requires an airing of the secrets from the performance-enhanced era, or an uncovering of as many of the secrets as we can.
So I thank LoDuca for having the bravery and the integrity to admit to his mistakes.

And I have a hard time following Al Sharpton’s accusation that black athletes are receiving tougher treatment in the wake of steroid- and HGH-related scandals.  It seems that in the past few weeks the ballplayers most scrutinized and damaged by the Mitchell Report are Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Chuck Knoblauch—all of which are white.   LoDuca is also Caucasian.

It’s true that Barry Bonds has been indicted, and Clemens has not. But give him a few weeks.  After that unimpressive performance before Congress, Roger better ready his defense.

The baseball melodrama on Capitol Hill has taken another shocking turn. According to a report from Newsday, Andy Pettitte’s affidavit from last week contains information that supports Brian McNamee’s version of events. More specifically, Pettitte admits having had a conversation nearly ten years ago with the Rocket about HGH use, according to the AP.

How will this evidence affect the hearing scheduled for later this morning? That is unclear, but it remains unlikely that Clemens will recant and beg for the committee’s forgiveness. In fact Pettitte’s own testimony provides a clue to how the supposed HGH conversation will be handled. When Pettitte talked to Clemens in 2005 about that earlier conversation, Clemens told his friend he was mistaken. It was Roger’s contention that they had not spoken about HGH at all and that Pettitte had misunderstood.

The likelihood of misunderstanding a conversation about illegal drug use seems pretty low to me. This is doubly the case when it led in no small part to your own decision to begin illegal chemical supplementation—and in so doing accepting the attendant professional and health-related risks. But human memories are notoriously imperfect instruments, and there is plenty of room for Clemens to exploit this fact. He’ll continue to allege that Pettitte misremembered or misinterpreted the conversation at issue.

Legal maneuvers aside, the situation is looking fairly bleak for Clemens. Pettitte and Knoblauch appear to have substantiated most of what McNamee has said about them and in so doing made Clemens’ former trainer appear much more trustworthy. Perjury charges might be just around the corner for whomever the committee doesn’t believe today. Clemens could use someone else to substantiate his story. And I’m talking about somebody other than Jose Canseco. (They might as well have asked me if I had ever witnessed Clemens taking steroids or HGH.)

My advice to Roger before he testifies today is: remember Marion Jones and Martha Stewart. If he did the crime, the cover-up will be what hurts the most. Although right now the defection of his old friend Pettitte may sting more.