“Are we going to reward these guys for cheating?” Gossage asked Michael Kay and Don La Greca on ESPN New York 98.7. “Even though he was found innocent, it was because of the bad testimony. No one believed (Brian) McNamee and (Andy) Pettitte kind of changed his thing, ‘Did I really hear what he told me.’ “
...A crucial barometer comes this fall, when Clemens’ name appears on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. Gossage clearly is not convinced of Clemens’ innocence, comparing the trial’s outcome to the controversial 1995 verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
“O.J. Simpson, did you believe he didn’t kill those two people?” Gossage said Thursday.
Gossage also wants Congress to release the list of 104 names from the anonymous 2003 player survey. Although it would break civil liberty rights, Gossage is in favor of finding out who used steroids and who didn’t during the anonymous testing period.
“Release the whole list and let’s get it out there on the table and see who tested positive for these things,” Gossage said. “I saw bat speeds of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. Mark was a great teammate. I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate when I played out in Oakland.
“Jose Canseco, I lockered next to him. Canseco is the only guy who has come clean. Like him or not, he is telling the truth. These guys lie, lie, lie and lie. Roger, I think, is in the same boat. I think there is validity to him using and absolutely not do they belong in the Hall of Fame.”
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Sandberg's pretty bad.
Joe Morgan?
I guess Bob Feller gets a pass for being a war hero.
For him to whine for so long about not making it, and then appoint himself George Zimmerman Memorial Hall Watchman as soon as he got in is comical.
Well, according to Jon Pareles, Coldplay is first.
Back-to-back non-sequitors. Impressive.
I genuinely could not possibly care any less than I do.
I couldn't care less.
Which is why your constant defense of Clemens is baffling. If you don't care at all about steroids, and if you don't think they enhance performance, why do you care so much about what others think of Clemens and steroids?
Did this make any sense in your head before you typed it? Because logically it jumps straight from Point A to Point -F.
We are sitting in a bar. I have the list in my hand. I tell you what it is I am reading. I offer to show it to you. You refuse to look ?
Wow....thats mighty principled. I envy you guys.
Because if people are going to use steroids to smear players, the facts underlying their smear should at least be accurate.
It's not that hard, in the same sense that it's not hard to not flip through the National Enquirer when you're in line at the grocery store. It doesn't take "principle" to have an aversion to tabloid sleaze.
I truly have no desire to see the list.
EDIT: Of course, there is a downside, not the least of which deal with promises and rights of people. Still, disclosure serves a purpose.
As long as we are talking about keeping idiocy alive.....
Did I advocate releasing the list ? Did I ? I said we know it's wrong to release the list. Clearly it's illegal. And I didn't advocate it.
But if the list was public, you wouldn't look ? Sorry, I call bulshiiit.
Speak for yourself. I would refuse to see a list that I had no business seeing. The players were promised anonymity. The fact that nobody cares about that is sad, though - sadly - not unexpected.
? You didn't say the list was public. You said we were sitting in a bar and you had it in your hands and you offered to show it.
If it suddenly went public, I would look because I want to be informed on this issue, but not because I care who is on it.
If the list were public, even though it is illegal to release it you would look because you want to be informed, but since I'm just holding it in a bar, you wouldn't look ? That makes no sense at all. Key words here: You want to be informed.
Like I said, I envy you for being so principled assuming you really are. I would look at it. I am sure that 95% or more of the posters at BTF would.....protestations aside.
Surely you can understand why I would seriously doubt that someone like you, or Bob, who has so much invested in the steroids issue and has spent so much time studying it, reading about it, writing about it...(And I am appreciative of that, I have learned a lot from you guys).....certainly you can see why I would doubt that you could resist the temptation. I do not believe you are not curious in the least.
However I do concede that some people can put aside their natural curiosity and have the willpower not to look at something like that. It just strains credibility that those obsessed with the issue would be among that group.
Uh huh....
2.) Gossage is still correct. The analogy to the O.J. Simpson trial seems perfectly accurate as far as the question of "did he or didn't he?" is concerned, although it surely is a poor comparison in terms of the justness of the prosecution.
I find the willful 'agnosticism' from some around here about PED cases like Clemens' to border on the bizarre. It's one thing to adopt a position of "who cares if they used PEDs? I don't think it's cheating or wrong as I define the terms of the game." I disagree strongly with that position, but it's an intellectually defensible one. But too many people seem to give into a 'rooting instinct' and go far beyond that, into territory that cannot really be upheld unless we're simply tossing all common sense out of the window and adopting the sort of radical skepticism that can't be sustained outside of thought experiments. Was Clemens found not guilty due to a poor prosecution case (and hopefully perhaps some jury nullification as well?). Yup. Does that mean he didn't use steroids? I don't have to adopt the same rigidity of a court of law in making that assessment, and for me (and most people) the answer is obviously yes he did.
That's 180 degrees opposite of what you wrote in one of the other Clemens threads, where you say that the facts don't matter.
39. Ray (RDP) Posted: June 21, 2012 at 09:38 PM (#4163138)
"Refuse to look" is too strong; I just don't care. You might have a list of Rugby players who own BMW's. It doesn't interest me.
There is nothing that will end anything "once and for all." It is futile to try to convince true believers of anything that their Loch Ness Monster isn't real.
I don't see the parallel at all. There was evidence, good evidence, brought forth against OJ in trial. There was no evidence presented against Clemens, it was farcical.
But no, I don't really see an issue here irrespective of that.
To double up on #37 and bring it back to Gossage ... the only evidence we have that Clemens used is McNamee's testimony (and Pettitte's testimony). These were just found unreliable in a court of law and McNamee is on public record with different stories. Gossage himself says that Clemens was found innocent due to "bad testimony." But that testimony is the only evidence.
If you want bad analogies, Ryan Braun is closer to OJ because at least in Braun's case you have a scientific test with positive results.
I can see how someone could believe McNamee on the central claim. (*) I just can't see how any objective, fair-minded person could say, Yes, Clemens "obviously" used.
(*) Well, not really. I mean, it's not that he _couldn't_ be telling the truth about that; it's that, well, how in the hell do we know what he's telling the truth about and what he's not? He has lied so very many times. If you believe him, you have to take a massive leap of faith. The _only_ reason to believe him, in fact, is that he's not some random Joe Schmoe off the street; he indeed did have access to Clemens, for several years. But anyone looking at this objectively would immediately see that _Clemens_ comes off as the far more believable person. Add to that the fact that the feds investigated Clemens for years and couldn't find any other evidence -- no paper trails, no canceled checks, no other witnesses -- and it becomes really silly to believe McNamee over Clemens.
I'd read the list, but I wouldn't be willing to do anything more complicated than a google search to get it. If the list were private, the illicit nature of the information would make me a little more inclined to read it. In that respect, I suppose you could say that I care a little bit.
The results would not have any positive or negative effect on my opinion as to HOF-worthiness. In that respect, I suppose you could say that I don't care.
So I just assume that 50% were using. I don't believe that PED's had no positive effect for some players. Those that take that position are being pretty silly, but lord only knows who exactly and to what extent.
There isn't one guy that is HOF worthy by the numbers that I would not vote for and like most around here I think the writers are being sanctimonious asshats. It's the writers, not the players, who are eventually going to have to take the blame for making the HOF irrelevant and obsolete.
Because a bunch of dumbass sportswriters who have 1/20th the qualifications of the average BTF poster to judge baseball history have made it so?
Yeah, awesome.
The Hall of Fame is beyond stupid, and it's time to ignore it.
I agree 100%. see above post.
No, because doing so pressure other players to potentially sacrifice their health for the team. Character isn't the same as doing whatever it takes to benefit your employer.
Gossage pitched well into the 90s, so as long as we're flinging accusations without evidence I don't see why that's not a tacit admission he did use.
This isn't the Barry Bonds case, where people can pretend that they know how Greg Anderson would have testified if he had testified, or the Mark McGwire situation, where people can draw inferences from his failure to answer a question about it. There was no excluded evidence here. There simply wasn't any evidence. No Kathy Hoskins to claim she saw Clemens being injected, no ex-girlfriend who claimed to have observed physical changes. They scoured the country and found nothing.
Everyone of you would look at the list in my hands. EVERYONE.
What if it was a gay bar? Would you look at what I'm holding in MY hand? Come on. I want you to look. It's the only reason I came here, the drinks are overpriced.
Too desperate, especially in the age of Grindr.
I am afraid I most hold you in contempt of deliciousness.
This has always puzzled me, too. It's perfectly fine to not care if players use steroids, but then the agnostics hector those of us who do, and want the information. It's rather arrogant to think other people should be denied information because people with an agenda think they'll abuse it. Some people might, but so what? Who made the agnostics' prissy view of the world king?
I want as much information as I can get, and I don't care if it's leaked illegally. I don't care if the Pentagon Papers were leaked illegally, and I don't care if some of the information WikiLeaks publishes is leaked illegally. (And the question of whether the leak is "worse" than a baseball player taking steroids is a question I'm able to separate from other questions.)
The evidence is McNamee. McNamee is incredibly non-credible. QED.
These are all fair points. The problem is that in many cases the people driving the information ARE using the information to abuse it. I don't care if Roger Clemens used steroids, I DO care if Roger Clemens is being slandered or maligned unfairly.
It is my opinion that if the MLBPA agreed to a "confidential" test in 2003 then the results of that test should be kept confidential. Did MLBPA screw the pooch in the way the testing was handled? Yeah they did but they had a reasonable expectation of confidentiality that has been trampled upon and I find that offensive.
If you truly believe the only evidence is McNamee, you've evaluated the evidence no more effectively than Randy Galloway or Pedro Gomez.
Maybe, but if your perspective is that steroid use impacts one's evaluation of a player's true accomplishments, you'll want as much information as you can get. More generally, I want newspapers to ferret out information and provide it to me.
Well, at least you guys got both ends covered.
He's saying that if the list were legally made public (like if everyone on it agreed to release the information, or something like that), he'd read it, but that if it were just an illicit copy of dubious provenance being passed around in a bar, he wouldn't.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable position to me.
Not really, because under that test he wouldn't read the Pentagon Papers or Wikileaks.
I'm more bothered by the release of information I expected to be confidential than I am grateful that I have access to this information.
FWIW my perspective is not that steroid use impacts my evaluation.
And to answer the question from early on, of course I'd look at the list.
Okay, I'll bite. What credible evidence is there? Do you know?
Re steroid lists
I want as much information as I can get, and I don't care if it's leaked illegally.
Am I wrong to wonder if there's any hypocrisy afoot here?
Thank god for Wikipedia.
I did know Joyner was in the report, because I had heard that and it was kinda shocking considering his clean-cut image. I also think Jason Grimsley is in it? That's all I could tell you off the top of my head. So yea, you got me!
Yeah, I'll second that. Exactly what is this evidence that remains inviolate that no one is considering? Is this in the nature of believing that there's some kind of chance somehow Vince Coleman is a better leadoff batter than Rickey Henderson, so it's an intelligent position to hold that he is. What are your standards by which you arrive at a belief?
And tell me, is there any way that you people who say this would ever change your mind.
There is significantly more evidence in the factual record than the testimony of Brian McNamee. It's impossible to see how anyone could think otherwise.
I don't think there was any need for jury nullification, because there was nothing presented that remotely approached proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Obviously, you can base your own assessment on a lower standard of proof, and most people might well agree with that assessment. But IMO, considering all the time and money that the federal government put into this investigation, it's strikes me as odd that they were unable to turn up any evidence that even rises to the level of "obviously, yes he did." IOW, before the trial, I was pretty sure that Clemens had been a regular PED user for at least some period of time during his career. Now, I'm not so sure that he did anything more than dabble.
Not even a Murray Chass blogpost -- OMG, BACNE! MR. PRESIDENT
Specifics, please? You're suggesting there's a lot of it, so I'm guessing it should be easy to demonstrate.
And note that I asked above for "credible evidence." "My dog thinks so" and such level stuff doesn't count.
SBB is rubber, you're glue.
It doesn't, but the problem in this case is that the prosecutors never even got to the "credible" level, let alone anything above that.
Fine, but what's the "credible evidence", then? The question has been asked several times in this thread (not to mention a zillion other threads) and no one's responded with the goods yet. All we're getting are empty truisms like this one.
brain mcnamee can't even tell a straight story
roger is supposed to have started shooting up after he left boston before he went to toronto BEFORE mcnamee. where is the dealer? who is the dealer?
how is it that the feds can't find anyone who supplied roger with roids, seeing as how mcnamee HIMSELF didn't. how is it that after hundreds of millions of dollars/person-hours spent, that the feds couldn't find even ONE piece of evidence linking roger clemens to roids? even ONE person who could corroborate mcnamee's story?
how is it that mcnamee told the mitchell report that he didn't have ANY evidence against clemens then 2 years later, somehow the beer can with syringes saved suddenly appears?
why is it that so many people really REALLY think that a piece of shtt trying to save his worthless ass for federal time is such a much more reliable witness/truthteller than clemens? why does anyone think that the mitchell report - when mitchell is an ACTUAL BASEBALL OWNER - is worth more than a bucket of warm spit?
how is it that if clemens and pettitte tell each other EVERthang that pettitte somehow forgot to tell roger about his own HGH use in 02 and 04?
what does HGH have to do with either roids or performance enhancement?
so tell me
WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE TO SHOW - not guesswork with won/loss records - EVIDENCE - to show that clemens
Not one other person says that he saw Clemens buy, obtain, possess, or use any PED. Not one document associates Clemens with PED use. He never tested positive for PED use. Clemens had no association with anyone associated with PED distribution, other than McNamee. No phone calls, emails, wire transfers, checks.
To be sure, there's also Andy Pettitte, who thinks maybe he might have heard Clemens once mention that he used hGH, but isn't sure, can't remember anything other than that, but despite training with him never saw any evidence of PED use.
I'm not saying he has to be lying. But to conclude that he "obviously" is telling the truth? How could a reasonable person conclude that?
McNamee has told lie after lie after lie - many of them by his own admission. Given that, what is the logic that leads one to conclude that McNamee has to be telling the truth about supplying/injecting Clemens?
actually, your wife seeing a gynecologist is pretty damning evidence that maybe she got prescribed some vaginal suppositories of clebostel which you managed to get a trillionth of in YOUR body by kissing her or having sex with her and that makes YOU a drug user!!!
and besides, clemens had to shoot up his wife's HGH to make his body all cut because he was posing in a string bikini for sports illustrated swimsuit edition
If Corso is to be believed, he had this stuff saved since 2005.
Depends how you define 'dabble". If McNamee's allegations are to be believed, Clemens was hardly a hardcore abuser. Multiple injections for three years over a 24 year career can arguably be considered "dabbling". Not to mention his injections supposedly ended in 2001, well before steroid testing was implemented in baseball. So the whole "never failed a drug test" argument goes out the window since the allegations are that he used before steroid testing.
The cases were weak and overreaching. The Clemens verdict was proper in the spirit of jury nullification.
That's the government for you. Got to be either corrupt or wasteful when it's not both.
What numbers? Saves? If you look at him in context, iow as a multi-inning reliever, he has some of the top seasons ever. His combination of IP and ERA+ in 75, 77, and 78 are amongst the top. If you look at WAR for relievers, he has the top season at 8.1 and another in the top 10.
Unfortunately Q didn't have the narrative going for him, but agree he was an oustanding reliever and deserved more consideration.
I am with Ken Davidoff's position - The MLB/MLBPA agreement regarding PED usage in 2003 is the sharp dividing line. Once testing was instituted, any failures after that date mark a player for punishment by the league, HOF, eternal damnation, whatever.
Again, you're constructing a narrative of things that might have been present had Clemens used PEDs, and confusing it with things that must have been present had Clemens used PEDs. You did the same thing earlier with the "Well, why didn't Pettitte tell Clemens he used HGH"?
(You're also assuming the evidence in a criminal case is necessarily an exhaustive collection of all extant evidence, which is also a misguided assumption.)
Yes they did, Andy. Don't let the cussed and dogged insistence of the agnostics be the final word on the subject, because it isn't.
Not much, but it is something people will bring up as a connection.
So again, what is this credible evidence of Clemens's PED usage that you're on about? Enough with this vague casting of aspersions - what have you got?
Its sad..
Hannity? Sean Hannity? "PROVE TO ME the atmosphere is warming!!!!"
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