{"id":140,"date":"2010-08-20T12:58:41","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T17:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2013-01-14T13:05:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T18:05:59","slug":"obligatory-clemens-post-post-indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Obligatory Clemens post, post-indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every other blogger and pundit on the net seems to have pipped up about Roger Clemens<\/strong> recent federal indictment on charge of perjury for lying to congress.\u00a0 So here’s my take:<\/p>\n

What a mess.\u00a0 Others have stated it the same way that I would.\u00a0 The hubris of an athlete assuming that he is above even congress is really amazing.\u00a0 In some ways I hope Bonds <\/strong>and Clemens go to jail to pay for their crimes.<\/p>\n

In other ways, I wish that the syndrome of “middle aged white sportswriters eviscorating baseball players for destroying the records of their boyhood heros” would just pass.\u00a0 Yes, every home run record from the mid 90s to the early 2000s is a joke.\u00a0 Yes, the career record now held by Bonds is tainted.\u00a0 McGwire <\/strong>is getting tepid HoF support despite being a significant hitter *before* the advent of Steroids.\u00a0\u00a0 Sammy Sosa<\/strong>‘s records now look just shameful (especially when combining steroid usage with his corked bat suspension).\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 There’s nothing we can do about it.<\/p>\n

Alex Rodriguez<\/strong> probably will go down as the greatest hitter to ever play the game.\u00a0 And a serious candidate to overtake Willie Mays<\/strong> as the greatest 5-tool player of all time.\u00a0 Yet his admission of steroids use will taint his legacy just like every other player who comes up for Hall of Fame voting over the next 5 years.<\/p>\n

I tried to think of a comparison.\u00a0 Swimming records that fell with regularity with the use of (now banned) body suits.\u00a0 Perhaps track and field records which still stand from systematic drug usage in the 80s by eastern bloc athletes?\u00a0 How about Baseball pitching records before\/after the deadball era.\u00a0 Or how about pitching records from 1968, the year before the mound was lowered and Bob Gibson<\/strong> posted a 1.12 era (and somehow had NINE losses??).\u00a0 Aren’t these records still in play, with the discussion topic that immediately follows?\u00a0 How about the infamous “astericks” homer record by Roger Maris<\/strong>, put in place to protect the legacy of Babe Ruth<\/strong> by somehow discounting the amazing accomplishments of Maris.\u00a0 Nobody talks about that now.<\/p>\n

But it will never go away.\u00a0 We are baseball fans, and iconic “numbers” now are ruined.\u00a0 755.\u00a0 61.\u00a0 Nobody knows what the most touchdown passes thrown in a season is and nobody remembers that “number” like you know 61 homers or 755.\u00a0 And we’ll continue to talk about it for the rest of our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every other blogger and pundit on the net seems to have pipped up about Roger Clemens recent federal indictment on charge of perjury for lying to congress.\u00a0 So here’s my take: What a mess.\u00a0 Others have stated it the same way that I would.\u00a0 The hubris of an athlete assuming that he is above even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1390],"tags":[357,153,596,640,667,637,1121,501,279],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-hall-of-fame","tag-alex-rodriguez","tag-babe-ruth","tag-barry-bonds","tag-bob-gibson","tag-mark-mcgwire","tag-roger-clemens","tag-roger-maris","tag-sammy-sosa","tag-willie-mays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5743,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/5743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}