It seems as though the same aggressive, combative instincts which made Clemens such an effective pitcher, are applied to everything in his life.
He decided to risk perjury charges rather than drop his denial of having used steroids. Why? It was as though he was daring anyone to try and come after him and relying on the fact that he was THE ROCKET and too big and important for anyone to bring down.
And once more, with the revelation of his affair, his first instinct was to combat, to lie, to counter punch, to deny. That he knew it was actually true and could easily be confirmed if McReady decided to do so.....didn't seem to enter into his thinking.
We saw an earlier manifestation of this personality trait back with the famous bat throwing incident with Mike Piazza. Clemens went through a couple of contradictory statements about what was going on, none of which made any sense. First he said he thought he was fielding the ball. Then he changed that to the idea that he was trying to toss the broken bat piece to a batboy, which of course if true, makes the thought it was the ball story a lie. He never did settle on one version. I always thought it looked like he thought the broken bat piece coming at him was Piazza throwing his bat at Clemens, and he acted angrily and retaliated without realizing what had actually happened. That would seem forgivable if it is what took place, but Clemens had already gone with his first instincts...lie about it.
This guy has Nixon level credibility at the moment.
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