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When I read about the on the field fight last week between the Rays and Yankees, I was in shock. This was Spring Training. You don’t fight during Spring Training. That’s crazy.

It all began with a play at the plate. This is easily one of the most violent moments in professional sport. A catcher stands at home waiting to receive the ball from his fielders while a runner barrels in toward him. For the catcher, the hope is that he’ll get the ball in time and tag the runner. For the base runner, the hope is that he’ll either get home before the ball or, in the alternative, knock the ball loose by colliding with his opponent full bore. It’s not a play people relish; no one wants to blindside a defenseless person. But it is a necessary and accepted situation. It happens time and again because that is how the game is played, with maximum intensity.

But Joe Girardi, the new Yankees manager, criticized a Rays player for overrunning a Yankee catcher and breaking the catcher’s wrist. Giraridi’s position? This was Spring Training and there was no reason to play that hard in Spring Training.

To which I thought, isn’t Spring Training the place where young careers, like those of both the runner and the catcher involved in the collision, are made? Shouldn’t unproven players whose hope is to finally make the Major Leagues play as hard as they’ve ever played, if not harder? Shouldn’t their goal be to impress with both their abilities and their hardnosed hustle? These are their careers, after all. Would it have been acceptable for the Yankees’ catcher to have backed away from the play because “it’s only Spring Training” and he doesn’t want to get hurt? Hell no. Girardi’s position just doesn’t make sense.

But the craziest part of the affair happened four days later when a fight broke out. Girardi’s childish wining, about an unfortunate but appropriate play, emboldened his players to act like kids too. Shelley Duncan, a first baseman for the Bronx Bombers, took it upon himself to slide into Rays Second Baseman Akinori Iwamura with spikes held high. Of course this ludicrous action sparked an on-the-field brawl and the league meted out punishments all around.

Now Duncan is appealing his three-game suspension. Why can’t he just take his deserved penalty like a man?

No doubt these un-pleasantries will continue during the regular season, and that is a shame. Girardi should demand that his team not retaliate further. That won’t happen, of course. And now that we’ve seen what an explosive personality he can be, expect an entertaining series of public addresses this season as Girardi tangles with the rabid New York media.

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.

Now that I’ve had time to digest the drama from last Wednesday with all its attendant accusations and speechifying, I’ll join the chorus of amateur interpreters to tell you what I saw when Clemens and McNamee took the stand.

The thing that stood out to me was what Clemens said when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs. Each time he denied using chemical supplements, he accompanied his assertion with a reminder of just how hard he has had to work. Under any circumstances, the inability to answer a direct question with a direct, to-the-point response looks bad. When it’s before a Congressional committee and in front of the country, it can wound your image very deeply.

But that’s not what worries me the most. It’s Clemens’ obsession with his own work ethic that strikes me as odd. Why keep insisting on his commitment to athletic training? How is that germane? Did I miss it when some congressman asked Clemens for workout tips?

It seems Clemens thinks the accusations against him are broader than they are. Last time I checked he was merely suspected of taking steroids and HGH on 16 specific occasions. It’s as if he interprets the Congressional inquiries as suggesting he had no hand in his own achievements—that he is merely the conduit through which steroids and HGH have compiled hall-of-fame credentials.

No one makes it to the major leagues, much less wins a Cy Young award, without a work ethic of the first rank. Anyone who contends otherwise has either never picked up a glove or is in the throes of a fantastic delusion.

Roger, we all know you’ve worked extraordinarily hard. What America wants to know, plain and simple, is did Brian McNamee inject you with steroids and HGH? Until you can pick that question out from these imagined attacks on your work ethic, I’ll find your denials unconvincing.

See Roger Clemens deny the accusations against him in his opening statement and then later in the proceedings.

When the Mitchell Report first emerged on Dec. 13, the allegations against Roger Clemens were startling.  Media attention focused on when and how he would counter the findings of the report.  It took weeks before Clemens mounted a reasonable defense.  Statements through his agent and attorney were deemed impersonal and unconvincing.  An uncomfortable-looking Clemens posted a video on YouTube ten days after the report surfaced in which he told the viewers:

“It’s amazing to me that…I’m going to go to the lengths that I’m going to go in to have to defend myself, to do this.”

These were not the kind of words that inspire the confidence of the American people.  He should have been defending himself not airing his disbelief at having to defend himself.
 

An interview on 60 Minutes on Jan. 6, three weeks after the release of the report, also did little to quell the concerns about the legitimacy of his accomplishments.
 

Why would his response to this crisis have been so slow, insubstantial, and misguided?  To understand that, you must understand a bit about Clemens’ history.
 

Roger Clemens has never let anyone else’s opinion of his ability hamper him.  He has always found his own path and decided along the way what was and was not possible.  Many times he has performed best after being underestimated or criticized by others.

He famously scorned a 12th round selection in the 1981 draft by heading to the University of Texas where he made two All-America teams and won the College World Series in 1983.  His draft stock much improved, Clemens was selected in the first round with the 19th overall selection that year and made a swift rise to the Major League.
 

Clemens left the Boston Red Sox following the 1996 season after an excellent early career there.  Announcing the failed negotiations to keep the hurler, then-Red Sox GM Dan Duquette infamously pronounced that Clemens was in “the twilight of his career.”  Clemens went on to win the Cy Young Award—given to the best pitcher in each league—in both of the next two seasons for the Toronto Blue Jays.
 

Then at the age of 43, when most pitchers are content to watch their sons play high school ball, he had his finest full-season ERA, a mind-bogglingly miniscule 1.87.  He had proved that no one’s appraisals of his talent were accurate; he was sui generis.
 

Now in the intense gaze of the Mitchell Report investigation, people’s opinions of The Rocket have begun to matter like never before.  He can no longer employ his old tactics of ignoring what has been said about him and proving his worth on the field.  Any new superhuman season on the mound would only be added to the evidence against him.  He has to learn to excel in the world of public relations.  This is what me missed initially.
 

And that is why he is now making the rounds in Congress, trying to glad-hand those people who will decide his fate in front of the eyes of the nation.  This is a smart move by Clemens’ people.  I just hope it isn’t too little too late.

P.S. Those Clemens people keep making mistakes.  The flawed and unconvincing statistical report they compiled to support their client has been criticized by a group of business professors.  They should learn that the stunts they use to influence public opinion should be meaningful.  In case they haven’t noticed, Congress is involved and people are taking this situation seriously.