Next Stop: Congress

As I sit here and watch Roger Clemens on 60 Minutes, it has reopened all of the garbage the Mitchell Report brought out that many people, including myself, have thrown on the backburner.

Clemens had about a 15-minute interview in which he repeatedly swore he never took HGH or any other steroids. Brian McNamee claims several specific times in the report times that he personally injected Clemens. 

Clemens opened the interview asking 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace why his 24 years in the majors isn't enough to get the benefit of the doubt from the American public. He asked why he cannot get an inch of trust for all the contributions he's made to the game of baseball. He then claimed America has turned into the "guilty until proven innocent" nation.

There were two things Roger Clemens said that caught my attention. The best point that he made during the interview was when he asked Wallace how he got these alleged steroids. The Mitchell Report says that McNamee injected him, but has no proof on how he got them. The reason this stuck out to me was because many of the others on the list had copies of personal cheques for thousands of dollars for the drugs. Clemens' tarnished name has come at the hand on one man trying to avoid jail time by throwing out a big name trying to clear his own.

The next thing Roger said was that he was just as shocked to hear his good friend Andy Pettitte's name on the list as he was his own. He said he had no idea about Pettitte and that he "Had no knowledge of what Andy was doing". That, if true, says a lot to me because it has been their friendship and training over the years has been well documented. We all knew they were good friends, and we all knew Clemens' workout regiment is the one they used for the actors in "300". 

We will keep finding out more and more, especially if Clemens goes in front of Congress in 10 days. As of now, I can say that I wasn't surprised with that interview other than what I mentioned, and Clemens said basically what was in the statement he released. After Clemens said "Guilty until proven innocent", I really thought about the evidence and realized there isn't much. A single man's story has dragged a 350-game winner's name through the mud. I've changed my opinion because I fell under the guilty until proven innocent crowd, and until there is more evidence, I believe Roger Clemens. I would need to see a personal cheque or some sort of money trail linking him to performance-enhancing drugs at this point to think otherwise.