The final word on Roger Clemens and steroids

All we hear is did Clemens do it? Is he lying? Why would his trainer Brian McNamee lie? No, no, no, no, NO! Stop it please! I am tired of this back and forth as I am sure most of you are. There is one thing and one thing only to indict Roger Clemens at this point and I am surprised that this key point has not brought to attention more by sports talk radio and writers: Roger Clemens is guilty by association. Period. Sorry Roger but you are. Look I can slightly believe that you did not do steroids and HGH. But in no way do I believe that you did not know that Brian McNamee was a supplier of these illegal substances. McNamee is consider 'family' according to Clemens' own words.

Roger Clemens should have seen this one coming a long long time ago. He is a public figure and did watch his associations carefully. Sure he can argue all he wants that he did not get these injections from him. But if Brian McNamee injected other players (Andy Pettitte, et'al), the court of public opinion will always associate you with a drug dealer. It is like saying I don't steal but I hang around thieves. So wouldn't you think I was a thief too? It is all about choices you make. And this goes for all the other players wrapped up in this scandal. The problem is I don't think we will ever find the proverbial 'smoking gun' to prove that Clemens is innocent or guilty. So I predict his reputation will forever be tarnished.

But when it is all said and done, Roger Clemens is still a Hall of Fame pitcher. But people will just snicker and just link him with this scandal in their minds when they look at his Gold Plaque in Cooperstown someday.

Now how do we get final closure on this baseball steroid scandal? Maybe we need to embrace it? Sounds ironic but maybe the Baseball Hall of Fame should have a display acknowledging the steroid era? That may be unfair to those great players who did not do steroids. But lets face fact here, 100 years from now we won't remember names. Just the whole lot who played during this time period was involved in one form of the other since it was so wide spread. But we all turned a blind eye. The baseball executives, the players, and us the fan knew something had to be going on illegally. Yes, us the fan. We all enjoyed seeing the homerun records broken even though we knew some of these players looked like massive Belgium Cattle (Mark McGwire, et'al). We perpetuated the sport into riches they never dreamed of. We are all to blame for letting this manifest to the colossal imbroglio we see our beloved sport in now. So like Senator George Mitchell stated in his speech when he released his report, lets accept this and move on. Otherwise this stink will just linger indefinitely.

- The Mountain Cat