On the other hand…

I have to admit to enjoying more than a bit of schadenfreude over Roger Clemens being mentioned in the report.

Hey, I’m human.  I have failings too.  And enjoying asshats finally get their comeuppance is  one of them.

As far as I’m concerned, before the report came out, Clemens represented most of what is wrong with many professional athletes these days.  No sense of team, no caring about the fans.  Not caring about any aspect of the game except how it can work for him.  This guy thumbed his nose at 3 fanbases.  He kept MLB hanging every time he made the ‘decision’ to return.  He tried to turn baseball into the Roger Clemens show.  And he always got away with it.  Yankees fans welcomed him back with open arms this year after the way he treated them.  Many Sox fans were willing to do the same this year and last.  Just because he was a great pitcher.  Didn’t matter that he trampled on the game – folks wanted to see him pitch.

Well, now they’ve attached the "S" word to his name.   It didn’t surprise me, since I’ve always suspected.  (I mean, don’t we all start to perform better the older we get?)  But it DID surprise me that it was actually OUT there now.

All the conspiracy theorists who want to bitch that no current Red Sox (save Donnelly and Gagne if by ‘current’ we use the 2007 roster) were on the list, chew on this.  First off, as has been noted in many places, the main sources for this info came out of the Mets and Yankees clubhouses.  (Which I find fascinating in itself.  Do all teams  hire guys as unsavory as these two?  Maybe  not given no other teams had clubhouse guys ratting out their players…)  So of COURSE  you’re going to see more NY guys on the list.

But more importantly, MLB LOVES Clemens.  He is their savior.  The Cy Young-winning, first ballot Hall of Famer, who is good enough and big enough for them to WAIT for.  "You don’t want to start the season in April, Roger?  That’s cool.  We’ll wait."  There is no way anyone involved with baseball, whose name isn’t Mike Piazza,  wanted to see Clemens outed this way.  (I exclude fans and writers from this.  We’re a bloodthirsty lot.)  As it stands, arguably the two biggest names in baseball, over the last twenty years, are being exposed as cheats.  I would think MLB would have preferred a few Nixon, Varitek and even Ramirez names as opposed to Clemens or Bonds.

I’m not saying that the Red Sox are some squeaky clean organization.  The Mitchell Report lists enough players associated with the team to not be able to make that argument at all.  

But maybe they’re just smart enough to not hire sleazeballs to work their clubhouses?   Maybe the organization knows how to treat people who work for them so they wouldn’t want to drop dimes on anyone?

Or maybe the guys on the team over the last few years HAVEN’T been using?  That’s possible too.

We’ll never know, in spite of the Mitchell report.  So my schadenfreude, while enjoyable, will be short-lived.