Quote:
Originally Posted by kflo
once again, nan making this about anything other than actually having to honestly assess steroid and hgh use, and players telling the truth and taking any responsibility for their own actions. instead, it's everyone else's fault. always. no assessment of whether clemens actually perjured himself. not any concern. clemens has a spartan work ethic!
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Look. You are not alone in your convictions. For cryin' out loud, Lawrence Kudlow, for whom I once held great respect as a student of economics, jumped on his increasingly extraneous and verbal soapbox to say today, "I believe Roger Clemens was lying through his teeth." I fully respect Kudlow's right to voice any opinion he likes on his business program; but the respect I once had for him simply fell another notch below its already discounted level today.
Your posts have increasingly become a tedious exercise in dogging my own with a relentless challenge containing two predictable components:
1. Nan, you are making of this something it is not; and your focus is wrong-headed in that you are blind to the truth that eveyone else can plainly see: Clemens [Bonds .... pick your "cheater name" - they are interchangeable here] is a lying cheater, a disgrace to the game, a terrible example for our youth ............................... is that nearly close enough?
2. You [Nan] choose to blame everybody else because of your blindness to the facts as I [kflo] see them ................ is that close enough?
I have on too many posts here provided time lines, facts, stats, even tables of extraordinary seasons at advanced ages going back to 1901; and those efforts get the same hollow and endlessly echoing responses.
Perhaps, at the bottom line, my moral standards have atrophied with the years. I have grown weary with moral righteousness, lawyers, speechifying elected officials with gavels, iconic sluts as social revolutionaries and standard bearers, and burned out young superstars being morally autopsied by talking heads and moralizing media hosts whose claim to fame is a law degree or former prosecutorial or defensive practice.
For me the most telling testimony today was that which suggested ownership had approached player agents to collude on fighting off the demonizing of substances, rigorous testing and prosecution - each a link in the chain we are now beholding.
The fact is I do not really care at this point who used what and to what degree he [they] kept themselves informed as to substance chemistry, dosage, federal legality or the provision of an illicit edge. In a nest of vipers, wriggling for every buck, promotion, headline, photo op, demonstration of authority, I see little value in excoriating the ones to whom talent & tempting apples have been distributed.
When I recall my childhood favorites, my hero was heavily fined on one occasion for flashing the finger and again, even more severely taxed for giving the "Italian salute" to another crowd of hostile fans. However, he was great with kids, gave this 9 year old his autograph outside the players' entrance at Yankee Stadium and served almost 6 years in two wars.
Joe DiMaggio, a non-favorite, but another "great" made a living selling coffee and autographs, with a nothing-for-nothing, grubby attitude. Not everyone can be as quietly classy and self-effacing as Cecil Travis, who paid quite a price for his service; or as exhuberantly happy for making it to the Big Show and sticking it out for over a decade [with wartime out] like a Jimmy Bloodworth.
These guys are human. They have a very narrow and brief window of opportunity. Some are good guys; some are legitimate heroes with quirks of anger or superstition; some are arrogant SOB's. And, truth be told, at my age, I can look at every player in a MLB uniform as a "kid." [And too soon, old].
So, whatever else he may be, Roger Clemens has been humiliated by public charge and "trial;' publicly scolded by the likes of a Henry Waxman; accused by a diploma-mill "doctor," ex-street cop drug dealer; tried in front of his kids and their generation; and NO MATTER WHAT THE TRUTH MAY BE has had his reputation indelibly slimed.
Barry Bonds may be looking forward to even worse, if this is the last of the hearings.
I will sleep soundly tonight. I will also sleep soundly if worse comes to Clemens, Bonds and others. There will be many who may chest-thump if such "justice" is served; but I, happily and proudly, will not be among them.
It won't be naivete, either.