* Mad about baseball

The cover of the May Mad magazine features good ol’ Alfred E. Newman as Baseball’s Newest Mascot: Mr. Roids.

The current issue also has a pertinent spin-off on the Roger Clemens AT&T wireless commercial, with Andy Pettitte at the other end of the line. There’s also “Things We’ll Probably Overhear at the Upcoming Barry Bonds Trial…”, including

• From Bonds’ attorney: “The only things my client is guilty of are arrogance, rudeness, adultery and lying in court. Only one of which happens to be illegal.”
• From the prosecution: “And did you personally electrocute the Pit Bulls…oh, wait, sorry, wrong sports scandal,” and “I remind you that you are still under oath, not that you cared the last time.”
• From the judge: “Will the defendant please approach the bench and autograph this home run ball I got off eBay?” and “Overruled. Defendant will answer questions about his massive hat size.”
• From Barry Bonds: “I’m not playing on any prison softball team for less than $8 million.”
• And my favorite: “I’d watch the trial on truTV, but Tim McCarver just won’t shut up.”

There’s also a faux movie poster for The Bad News Bare-Asses, “starring” Clemens, Pettitte and Brian McNamee. Tag line: “Baseball has rules. Not that these a-holes care.”

Perhaps not so coincidentally, The New York Times ran this interactive slide presentation on cartoonist Al Jaffee, who, among other things, has drawn in famous Mad fold-in for years. Among the pieces represented, Roger Clemens “morphing” into a pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears, Pete Rose to Charlie Brown, and football overcoming baseball as America’s number one sport.

NOT the current cover.

* Clemens isn’t taking PEDs; he’s taking pre-natal vitamins

From a New York Times profile on Mad magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, still going strong at 87. For decades, Jaffee has drawn the inside back cover “fold-ins” (surely you remember these).

The fold-ins these days are as full of youth culture as ever. (March 2008: “What major star has recently admitted receiving illegal career-damaging human growth injections?” And a picture that looks as if it’s going to be Roger Clemens folds to become Jamie Lynn Spears, pregnant.)

* The next Clemens Report

“Weighing the Committee Record: A Balanced Review of the Evidence Regarding Performance Enhancing Drugs in Baseball”

Is that like FOX News is “clear and balanced?”

The official press release:

Minority Report: No Easy Answers in Clemens Steroid Use Case

Details Don’t All Add Up For Pitcher or Trainer, Investigators Find

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 25, 2008 — Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., Ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today released a staff report analyzing the body of evidence that prompted the Committee to refer the question whether Roger Clemens lied to Congress when he denied ever using steroids or human growth hormone.

New information has emerged, since the Committee’s high-profile hearing, about differences in testimony given by Clemens and McNamee on secondary issues such as whether Clemens attended a barbeque at Jose Conseco’s house or whether Clemens received vitamin B-12 injections. Further investigation also has revealed differences in the stories of Pettitte and McNamee about how Pettitte came to use human growth hormone to help him heal from an elbow injury.

According to the report, some of the information gathered by the Committee bolsters the case for referring the Clemens matter to the Department of Justice for further investigation. For example, McNamee’s angry reaction when Clemens’ teammate, Andy Pettitte, revealed Clemens had told him about using human growth hormone seemed critical. But other details could undermine the credibility of Brian McNamee, one of Clemens’ key accusers.

The report also lends credence to Clemens’ version of how he came to sustain a buttocks injury while with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998. According to the report, team records show Clemens received a B-12 injection in July 1998, as Clemens stated. The team doctor confirmed giving the injection. And the injury – according to a physician’s exam and a subsequent MRI – turned out to be a bruise, not an abscess caused by a hurried steroid injection, as McNamee claimed. In fact, three of the four teams for which Clemens played acknowledged B-12 injections were administered during his time with those teams.

“Did Roger Clemens lie to us?”

Davis said. “Some of the evidence seems to say he did; other information suggests he told the truth. It’s a far more complicated picture than some may want to believe. Memories fade and recollections differ. That’s human nature, not criminal conduct. My concern is the integrity of sworn statements made to Congress. At this point, the Justice Department is best equipped to investigate that central question and reach a fair conclusion.”

The Committee minority is also planning to provide copies of additional investigative documents to the Justice Department relating to the probe into Clemens’ truthfulness. The documents, requested by DOJ to further its investigation, include staff notes of conversations with various individuals with knowledge of events about which the Committee received conflicting testimony.

# # #

You can read the entire report as a PDF file here

* Bottom story of the day

(and not because of the steroid injection metaphor)

“Did Roger Clemens lie to us?” [Rep. Tom] Davis said in a release accompanying the report [ released today questioning whether the seven-time Cy Young Award winner lied in his testimony before the panel last month].

“Some of the evidence seems to say he did; other information suggests he told the truth, (emphasis added)” the Virginia Republican said. “It’s a far more complicated picture than some may want to believe. Memories fade and recollections differ. That’s human nature, not criminal conduct. My concern is the integrity of sworn statements made to Congress. At this point, the Justice Department is best equipped to investigate that central question and reach a fair conclusion.”

– Associated Press

I wonder how much that report cost the U.S. taxpayers?

 

* Announcement: Vindicated on sale March 31

According to this item in today’s on-line Publisher’s Weekly:

As Jose Canseco’s Vindicated arrives in stores, the controversial baseball player’s relationship with former Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens is under new scrutiny, as federal authorities investigate whether Clemens committed perjury when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs while testifying under oath to a Congressional committee. Canseco’s second book was picked up by Simon Spotlight Entertainment and ghostwritten by Pablo Fenjves (ghostwriter of O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It) after Berkley dropped the book due to skepticism about how much new information Canseco had to offer.

For Canseco, time to put his money where his mouth is

According to this piece in the New York Daily News, Jose Canseco’s book tours in California “may take an abrupt detour: The former slugger and admitted steroid user is expected to have a face-to-face meeting with IRS special agent Jeff Novitzky, the government’s lead steroid investigator who is now focusing his efforts on whether pitcher Roger Clemens perjured himself before Congress.”

Author profile: Jonathan Mayo

My interview with Jonathan Mayo, author of Facing Clemens, appears in this week’s issue of NJ Jewish News. Among other things, Mayo, a senior writer for MLB.com specializing in the minor leagues, reveals the “oy vey” moments he experienced after the release of the Mitchell Report in December, several months after his book in which he interviews a variety of batters who faced Clemens was slated for publication.

My review of Facing Clemens.

Author interviews: Jonathan Mayo

Apropos to my recent review of his book, Facing Clemens, here are a few interviews with author Jonathan Mayo. I’ll post my own later in the week.

• From Bluebird Banter, a Toronto Blue Jays blog
• From Was Watching, a Yankees blogger

You can read more about Mayo on his own Web site.

Review: Facing Clemens

Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher

By Jonathan Mayo. The Lyons press, 2008.

Mayo, a senior writer for MLB.com, had his book ready to go before the Mitchell Report was released last month. One can only imagine what he thought about the trickle-down effect caused by the revelation that Clemens was about to replace Barry Bonds as the biggest question mark in the game. And by question mark, I think I’m being charitable; most surveys I’ve seen place public opinion squarely against The Rocket.

After the release of the Mitchell Report, I wondered if any of the 13 players Mayo interviewed in the book would like to revise their opinions. Well, 12 if you give a pass to Koby Clemens, who faced his father in batting practice and an exhibition game. Would they still hold Roger in the same high esteem if they thought his gifts were store-bought instead of natural?

None of that, of course, is Mayo’s fault. He wrote an honest appraisal, supplementing his narrative with plenty of statistical evidence (perhaps too much at times), picking players who faced Clemens on a regular basis (Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr.) or in limited appearances (Gary Carter); who did well or poorly (Torii Hunter and Phil Bradley) against him; who knew him for a longtime (Dave Magadan, Julio Franco) or recently came on the scene (minor leaguer Johnny Drennen). The rest of the batters include World Series opponents Chipper Jones, Darryl Hamilton, Luis Gonzalez, and Juan Pierre.

Clemens himself wrote the foreword for the book. Needless to say, he had nothing to say about the murmurs that were circulating even before the MR.

Somewhere on the Internet, there must be a website that would tell you who Clemens hit more than any other batter, but one sticks out to any fan of the game: Mike Piazza.

According to Baseball-reference.com, Piazza has a .421 career regular season batting average off Clemens Five of his eight hits (in 19 at bats) went for extra base hits, four for homers. It was after one of those homers that Clemens hit him in the head with a pitch. As if that wasn’t bad enough — Clemens should absolutely no contrition — the Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, the pitcher threw Piazza’s sawed-off bat at him as he trotted to first. (It would have been most interesting to hear Piazza’s assessment of Clemens.)

Overall, Facing Clemens is a “good piece of hitting” by Mayo. It will be interesting to see if the fallout from recent and future events will play into the book’s sales.

Announcement: Waxman and Davis request Justice Department investigation on Clemens

You can read the whole sorry story here.

NY Daily News notes two books

Mark Feinsand’s “Blogging the Bombers” column notes two books with ties to the Yankees.

As the team heads into its final year at Yankee Stadium, look for more books like Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective, which capture the rich history of the ballpark.

The other book is noteworthy for a more ironic reason. Jonathan Mayo interviewed an assortment of batters for Facing Clemens; with all the recent allegations and doubts about the Rocket’s last few seasons, I wonder if these guys would like to revise their comments.

Author interview: Jonathan Mayo

From AmazinAvenue.com, this interview with MLB.com’s Mayo, author of Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher.

Times at “Play”

The New York Times “Play” supplement is turning into one of the better sports magazines around. Combining the newspaper’s reputation for journalism with slick production makes it entertaining and informative without making the reader feel guilty about wasting time reading about frivolous topics.

The latest edition gives plenty of “ink” the the Clemens-McNamee hearings, along with prose and multimedia presentations. Thanks to the new mini-dust up involving the mets’ Pedro Martinez, there’s also a piece about cockfighting.

Elephants for Clemens?

…[I]t was mostly Republicans backing Clemens. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising, considering that the pitcher is a close friend of George H.W. Bush, “even building a horseshoe pit at his home for the former president,” according to a 2006 USA Today article. While it’s a commonly held notion that most jocks—and almost all jock politicians—lean Republican, it was still odd to see a hearing on steroids split across party lines. Foxx, Burton, Shays, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., attacked McNamee’s credibility relentlessly, while their colleagues across the aisle—most notably committee Chairman Henry Waxman, Massachusetts’ Stephen Lynch, and Maryland’s Elijah Cummings—laid off McNamee and grilled Clemens.

Slate.com, Feb. 13, 2008

Update on hearings

From the Oversight Committee web site, this helpful collection of affidavits and other information.

A list of committee members.

---

2:06 Now Clemens is reading a statement from his wife, Debbie, on the use of HGH. I guess the point was to exonerate Roger from knowledge that she used it.If it were me, and my wife was dragged into the fray, I thing I would be more excised. And why did McNamee wait so long to make his statement about her.The Congresswoman is now showing photos from various stages in Clemens’ career, noting that his size had not changed much over the years (as Bonds’ and Sosa’s did over later in their careers).

Rep. Cummings says if it comes down to Clemens and McNamee, he believes Andy Pettitte the most (although therefore, by extension, McNamee). McNamee’s allegations have proved true about Chuck Knoblach and Pettitte, so why would he lie about Clemens?

Clemens’ is pleading ignorance about Pettitte’s usage; now he says Pettitte misunderstood his comments.

Rep. Cummings: Even Clemens agrees that Pettitte is an honest man, “but suddenly he misunderstood you ….You’re one of my heroes, but it’s hard to believe you.”

McNamee’s not saying anything new when he says the Mitchell Report just scratched the surface of drug abuse in baseball/sports.

Rep. Watson: What would you say about your own involvement as a trainer?

McNamee: “I’m not proud of it, and I wish I wasn’t here, but I am and I hope something good comes out of it.”

Rep. Watson: Each member of the committee and the viewers will draw their own conclusion. But Knobloch and Pettitte confirmed what McNamee has alleged. Clemens interrupts and is chastised. Says to McNamee that he took a lot of hits today, some warranted and some not and apologized for some comments that have been made.

Waxman concluded by basically saying the hearings were held to try to break the link between professional sports and drug use. We didn’t want to look at the past. We didn’t even want these hearings.

---

The hearings adjourned at 2:41 p.m. Let the parsing begin. I remember a scene in Airplane in which a group of reporters ran to a line of pay phones with such force and speed that they knocked over the whole row. That’s how I imagine things would be at this moment if not for cell phones.

Clemens Hearings: A perception

I’m a journalist by profession, so I understand that headlines sell newspapers.

I’m also a consumer, so I get annoyed when I feel cheated by a headline that seduces me into buying but inaccurately tells the story.

While opening my web browser, I read under the recent news section “Clemens struggles under testimony.” Maybe it’s just me, but it made it seem as though he adjudged not being truthful.

After watching and listening, my conclusion — which might be different than yours — was that he was “struggling” for a number of reasons including: a) he couldn’t hear the questions (several times he asked to have an inquiry repeated); b) he’s just not that bright and he doesn’t understand these questions; c) he is  lying.

Why don’t the editors who decide on such headlines say the same about McNamee, who, again, in my opinion) is having a more difficult time with the proceedings?

Notes on the Clemens hearings

(Note: In the interest of speed, I’m not going to be concerned with typos nor other editing. Here’s a link to the live hearings, if you happen to be reading this in a timely manner.)

12:03 p.m. Just tuned in to the hearings via computer. McNamee is being interviewed. I know I came late to the proceedings, but it seems like the committee is not being very friendly towards him. Not that he deserves it any dispensation, but still…

12:10 p.m. Someone should tell McNamee the world is pronounced “am-pewls,” not “am-pulls.” He doesn’t make a very compelling witness, hesitating on his answers, stalling, making the committee member repeat himself. Clemens, on the other hand, is more forceful in his responses, almost angry.

Boy they must have some lousy sound system, since now Clemens is also asking the members to repeat their questions.

12:16 Clemens: “Brian McNamee has never given me growth hormone or steroids.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney is really sucking up, stating how proud she is as a New Yorker of what he has done. “Why did you refuse to talk to Sen. Mitchell when he reached out to talk to you before the report was released?”

Now she’s asking about the differences between his comments on 60 Minutes and afterwards. Clemens response was that he was never told about the request from Mitchell’s people, and that if he had been told,m he would have been there “in a New York minute.”

12:21 Now he’s throwing his agents under the bus for not telling him. Although he said he had not fired them, as Maloney says she would have done if her staff had been neglectful in the same way.

12:22 Rep. Souder said the proceedings were “a disappointment.”

“It’s better not to talk about the past than to lie about the past. Someone is not telling the truth here today.” A more comprehensive view when the transcripts come out.

(It’s amazing to watch this. I wonder if all Congressional hearings are this passionate. It’s also amazing to consider how much time)

McNamee agreed he was really ticked off by Clemens’ playing the phone conversation and also he is “convinced” the needles will show an illegal substance, although he just says he’s speculating.

“The DNA [evidence] will not disremember,” said Souder, warning about

Incredibly disappointed with the players If family’s don;t talk about the drug abuse in their neighborhoods,”

Baseball players and management think they’re above it all, Souder said, that they think they’re a snitch if they talk about it. “This wall of silence is disgusting.”

12:29 Q from Rep. Claire (?): asked if he could look at his two children that Roger Clemens played the game honestly and without help.

“Yes, sir….Absolutely. I took no short cuts,” was the reply, followed by a recitation of his work ethic. Looks like he’s getting emotional here. Bringing up his late sister-in-law, who was killed because of drugs. “You can tell your boys I did it the right way.” Now he asked what uniform he would wear going into the Hall of Fame; wonder who’s side he’s on.

Now he’s going off on McNamee. No deal for testifying, he asks? No, says, McNamee.

12:36 Uh-oh, looks like the Nanny is refuting some evidence about a party at Jose Canseco’s that Clemens said he did not attend, calling into question the accuracy of other testimony. The committee asked for her contact info and wonders why Clemens took so long to turn over the information and why he spoke with her before they did.

Clemens’ lawyer rises and says this line of questioning is unfair. The chair agrees but keeps pushing the question.

The chair says he doesn’t know if this was the smartest way to have handled this, but also says he doesn’t know if there’s any impropriety (”the worst approach”) in that Clemens

Other lawyer: “innuendo is terrible.” This line of questioning is always going to seem like Clemens was doing something wrong by talking to her before the committee got to her.

Clemens: “I’m hurt by [that]statement.”

Rep. Norton: Why did Clemens’ continue to employ McNamee after all these disagreements (including giving his wife an injection of HGH)?

Clemens: “I’m a forgiving person.” This from a man who threw a bat at Mike Piazza in the World Series.

Clemens doesn’t appear very bright, taking McNamee on his word about too many things.

12:51 Recess. I gotta get back to work. But I’m glad I heard this. The newspapers, regardless of how thorough they’ll be, including providing all the transcripts, will cherry pick the highlights, probably showing Clemens at his best and worst; McNamee doesn’t appear to have a best at this point. But the media can’t transfer the feeling of witnessing the scene first hand.

ESPN coverage

Let’s get this over with

Brian McNamee claims he injected Roger Clemens’ wife, Debbie, with HGH for the couple’s appearance in SI’s 2003 swimsuit edition.

Now McNamee has a new list of enemies. It’s one thing to besmirch the National Pastime, but when you start messin’ with that other great American institution, well them’s fighting words.

ESPN’s Jim Caple makes his case for other women who might be involved in the scandal.

The ethics of friendship

Of late, I have wondered about the ethics of friendship. I’ve been watching The Wire, a cop /newspaper drama in which people do questionable things for ostensibly noble purposes.

In one episode, a superior officer chastises a patrolman for an unquestionably wrong act against a citizen who honked his horn at a crime scene. Although this sergeant was once a contemporary of the cop, he refused to back him up in this case.

Which leads, in a roundabout way, to Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.

The relationship between these two athletes has been written about extensively. Clemens and Pettitte are almost joined at the hip. It was Clemens who helped his friend decide to return to the Yankees. No doubt they have had deep conversations over the years.

But Pettitte, a self-proclaimed Christian athlete, must answer to a higher authority in the wake of recent steroid news. In fact, many sports pundits agree it’s Pettitte’s testimony, not Brian McNamee’s, that could pose the greater harm to Clemens’ situation.

The New York Times’ Mireya Navarro, contributed this piece on the Pettitte-Clemens friendship and refers to another athlete-cum-writer considered a pariah by many of his peers:

Jim Bouton, a pitcher and the author of the 1970 baseball memoir, “Ball Four,” said men become “like family and you stick up for each other.”

When his book exposed amphetamine use, heavy drinking and fighting among players, Mr. Bouton was labeled a Benedict Arnold by the baseball establishment, some ex-teammates and the press, but he never considered his book an act of betrayal.

“There are things I didn’t put in the book because I thought they’d violate the players’ confidences too much,” said Mr. Bouton, explaining that his goal had been to share what it was like to be a ballplayer, which he was with the Yankees and the Seattle Pilots. He described the experience as mostly “fun.”

“I did hold back,” he said. “It’s a tell-some book.”

 

Clemens and Canseco: Together at Last?

An entry in the NY Daily News‘ “Subway Squawkers” blog connects the dots between Roger Clemens and Jose Canseco through excerpts from Juiced.

As this evidence has not yet been released to the public, I don’t yet know how damning this is. What I do know is what Canseco wrote about Clemens in his book, “Juiced.” And one wonders why Clemens’ attorneys would bring up Jose in the first place, given what the player wrote about Roger - and so-called “B12 shots” - in his book. To put it mildly, Jose (and “Juiced”) doesn’t exactly help their case.

The writers — Lisa Swan and Jon Lewin — go on to give examples such as this one:

Check this out - Canseco writes on page 211 of the hardcover edition of “Juiced” about how steroid use was so “open” in the locker room that:

“…the trainers would jokingly call the steroid injections ‘B12 shots,’ and soon the players had picked up on that little code name, too. You’d hear them saying it out loud in front of each other, ‘I need to go in and get a B12 shot,’ a player would say, and everybody would laugh.”

Canseco then described what was really in the so-called ‘B12 shot’: “a combination of steroids - in most cases Deca and some form of testosterone.”

Etc.

 

The Clemens Report: “The gift that keeps on giving”

According to a Jan. 29 column by ESPN’s Tim Keown.

The upshot:

The bulk of the report is a skull-crushing dissection of nearly every start the man ever made. It is placed in the context of run support and other factors I think are supposed to make you believe Clemens is just a guy trying to make his way in the world, through the good and the bad, just like you and me.

And, therefore, not a steroid user.

In other words, A+B=Clemensisnotasteroiduserandneverhasbeensoleavehimalone.

Others to weigh in on the entertaining document include:

• Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci: “Do all the numbers prove that Clemens did not use steroids? Of course not, not any more than the sudden spikes in any career prove something fishy was going on.”
• Wallace Matthews in Newsday: “Like his previous three attempts at self-acquittal, this one, too, will blow up in Clemens’ face. Provided anyone is still awake at the end of the report.”
• Zachary Levine, a.k.a. “The Unofficial Scorer,” for the Houston Chronicle’s Web site: “I’d hoped to have a steroid-free week here on the blog, but 45 pages of sleep-inducing reading this morning changed that in a hurry.”
• ESPN radio’s Mike Greenberg offers an opposition viewpoint, to a degree: “Whatever he thinks he can do and could possibly do to defend himself, I don’t know why anyone would have a problem with it. I don’t know that this particular thing makes any difference to me, but I certainly don’t have any problem with it.”
• Joe Sheehan, Baseball Prospectus: “There’s no new information contained here. It’s not an analysis, not a study, not an investigation. It packages the facts of Clemens’ career, makes a handful of salient comparisons, and calls it a day.”

The consensus upshot of these and similar pieces is that the report only proves that the pitchers used as examples — including Clemens — had good seasons and bad seasons; it doesn’t prove anything one way or another about possible PED use.

Save a tree; don’t bother printing it out.

The Clemens Report

This report will evaluate the career of Roger Clemens, one of the most successful pitchers in major league history. It will examine both the quality and quantity of his pitching over the course of his 24-year career. As of the 2007 season, Clemens was one of the twenty-nine active major league players who were at least 40 years old. Of those twenty-nine, eighteen were pitchers, and twelve of those were starting pitchers.

Introduction to “An Analysis of the Career of Roger Clemens“

The report compares Clemens late-career numbers with those of other “old guy” pitchers, including Curt Schilling, Nolan Ryan, and Randy Johnson.

Sorry, but when I heard about this, it reminded me of the child who points to the behavior of a friend as an explanation/justification for his. “Billy has been tying the cat to a tree for years, and no one says anything.”

 

Until the actual hearings begin

What happened after 60 Minutes?

ESPN’s Bill Simmons speaks for many of us

when he asks in his column of Jan. 28 issue, “How do you put an asterisk on the best moment of your life? For him, and many Red Sox/Clemens fans, it was the second time he struck out 20. It came in a mediocre season against the Detroit Tiers and he movingly recreates the emotions he shared with his dad as well as a bunch of friends and strangers in a Boston bar.

“If Clemens cheated in ‘98,” he wonders, referring to the first accusation of PED usage,”how do we know if he was clean in Detroit?”

How do we reconcile oour own memories with everything we know now, after all the revelations?

Have a seat. This is going to take awhile.

A couple of entries ago, I pondered how experts in body language might assess Roger Clemens’ appearance on 60 Minutes.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Yesterday the Houston Chronicle published this piece, posted within hours of the segment, and today The New York Times did this one based on his Jan. 7 press conference. There are links to related items, including an excerpt from the telephone conversation.

Both pieces state that Clemens seemed nervous and agitated; what a surprise. The Times’ article, however, notes a retired F.B.I. expert on body language “warned against concluding that Clemens was lying. Even the most skilled body-language experts are right in only about half of all cases, he said, and investigators often study body language to decide when to dig deeper. It is not evidence that someone has committed wrongdoing; Clemens might have been showing stress from defending against potentially career-killing allegations. ‘He clearly shows signs of distress, but we don’t know why he’s being distressed,’ the former agent said.”

That the ballplayer, who told Mike Wallace he was strongly leaning toward retiring from the game, produced a secretly-recorded tape of a phone call he had with Brian McNamee last week, is also disturbing, since it’s illegal to do so in many states without the party being told of such an action.

Richard Sandomir, the Times’ sports media guy, also weighed in on both the press conference, as well as the 60 Minutes interview

…[T]he 17-minute audiotape of last Friday’s Clemens-McNamee phone call, … proved little, offered nonsense worthy of the Marx Brothers and made McNamee sound sympathetically tragic.

Without trying to sound too cynical, I think Clemens’ is playing the wounded warrior role to the hilt. On Sunday he expressed his disgust with not being given a shred of credit or benefit of the doubt despite all he’d done for the game. His questions to Wallace did not strike as as convincing. Where’s the person who sold the steroids? Why doesn’t he come forward? As if that absence proves his innocence. And as some sports pundit, whose identity presently escapes me, noted, the fact that Clemens has been around for 25 years or so is similarly no defense.

From the Sandomir column:

Clemens got to portray himself as a John Henry-like figure whose career was based on hard work, not a vial of that nasty Winstrol. And Wallace elicited a confession that Clemens seemed very eager to spill, about the only injections he got from McNamee being the vitamin B12 and the painkiller lidocaine.

But in admitting that he downed Vioxx “like it was Skittles,” Clemens seemed not to realize that his recklessness with a painkiller that is now banned may lead as many people to marvel at what he would do legally to keep his body pitching as to wonder if he would be incautious enough to illicitly juice himself.

ESPN’s Shaun Powell wrote “Odds, and history, don’t bode well for Clemens’ denials” and several Sports Illustrated writers contributed to the magazine’s online analysis.