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Roger Clemens walks

tornado

tornado

New member
Pardon the baseball pun but the FEDERAL government massively blew their entire case against Roger Clemens -- a case they have been building for many years and have probably spent TENS of millions of you tax dollars preparing...

BEFORE any testimony had begun and on the very 2nd day of the trial - one completely air-brained federal lawyer played for the jury a tape of some of the testimony before the Senate panel about illegal drugs..

The problem was, however, that the judge in this current case had already ruled that evidence and testimony COULD NOT be used nor entered into this case...
(much was hearsay and from witnesses that have never been deposed, sworn, nor called by any of the current lawyers)

"... prosecutors Steven Durham and Daniel Butler may have deliberately tried to bring before the jury evidence that (Judge) Walton had barred in a pretrial ruling."

His pretrial ruling was that the prosecutors would not be permitted to use ANY of those tapes but the federal prosecutors went ahead and did it anyway right in the judge's face!!!
UNBELIEVABLE!!!

THUS -- the judge immediately ruled the entire trial a MISTRIAL and commanded that Roger Clemens go free....
there is a high likelihood that Clemens will not be tried again - and I am personally very happy for that since the feds clearly have maybe just a few things that are a bit more important and pressing - don't you think?


Either way -- this has to represent one of the most ignorant, irresponsible, and blatant examples of government bumbling ever seen...
and absolutely nobody has any explanation for why a lawyer would do such and astoundingly stupid and self-destructive thing...
I kinda expect one of the lawyers on this board to come on and defend the guy but his actions are universally being labelled indefensible and incompetent.


http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...former-all-star-pitcher-walks-perjury-charges
http://blog.chron.com/jeromesolomon/2011/07/clemens-mistrial-repeat-after-me-waste-of-time/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...g-drug-cheats/2011/07/14/gIQA4qvPEI_blog.html
http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/incompetent-prosecutors-let-clemens-hook/



coming on the heels of the incompetence we saw by the Casey Anthony prosecutors and the Duke lacrosse prosecutors you gotta wonder how these government guys ever get a job??
 
T - I could not agree with you more on this subject. I know you are not condoning steroid use or perjury. This is not what any of us believes is correct behavior its just that the USA has limited resources and making a case against one of these athletes is more show and tell then solving any real problems.

Next in line is Armstrong.
 
I think you have to prove he has violated either laws or standards before you build yourself into a bias to keep him out of the HOF.

Way more than half his career, his AL MVP, plus most of his wins (233 of them) all occurred BEFORE the allegations were said to have happened (roughly 1998 ).....
thus Roger Clemens had a HOF career even before he was said to have used steroids.

In Roger's defense -- no credible evidence to date convincingly proves he used steroids -- the allegations all come from other proven, guilty users who have clear cause to implicate Roger for either spite (Pettite), to justify their own use (Grimsley), or to sell books (Canseco)..and he HAS been tested numerous times and has never failed a drug test!

Meanwhile, Roger has a remarkably stellar career, and despite a few minor or generaly unproven controversies, has had a stable 27-year marriage and family with great kids who are also great athletes (when journalists tried to find women Roger was alleged to have had affairs with they either couldn't even find the women named or found they didn't exist or denied an affair or even knowing him!), he's never had an arrest for guns, drugs, or booze...and (maybe no so coincidentally) he is a staunch conservative who supports gun rights and supports conservative Republican candidates.
 
Since it is writers who vote for the HOF, bias does play a big part in their voting. Supposedly many writers refused to vote for Steve Carlton (among others), an obvious HOF'er, just because he was an a-hole, and never liked the writers.
 
His numbers from Boston and Toronto alone would merit a Hall of Fame career. Since he started taking steroids when he joined the Yankees (when McNamee said he started shooting up Clemens), he never will be. If Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose (two of the best hitters ever) aren't in the HOF, Clemens never will be.
 
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Yeah HOF balloting is really messed up, I agree DaCoach.

I can never get worked up about players using steroids since it's clear that MLB and (particularly heinously) the player's union completely looked the other way for their own purposes. That means it wasn't effectively illegal, and my guess is that somewhere between most and almost all players used at times, whether it was to recover from injury or improve performance. My view is that if it's not really against the rules and nearly everyone was doing it, it's not cheating. Barry Bonds is a similar case to the one Tornado described, a fantastic HOF player well before he was suspected to start using PEDs. Media doesn't like him though, so he's being held up as the antichrist of steriods. The guy is a HOFer steroids or no, and so is Roger Clemens (even if he's guilty of perjury, that's not an HOF standard-- all kinds of d-bags in the HOF already).

And before anyone works themselves into a lather about "being able to compare eras," you couldn't do that before anyway. Nobody is ever EVER going to win 511 games like Cy Young did. And to pick on a more recent era, no starter is probably going to finish with a 1.12 ERA for a season like Bob Gibson did, unless they raise the mound again. You never could compare eras, and you won't be able to in the future either. The point here is to realize the late 80s to the earlier 00s was The Steroid Era. Understand what that means, and celebrate the players for what they were-- amped up roid-monsters playing against other amped up roid-monsters.
 
sousaman2089 said:
His numbers from Boston and Toronto alone would merit a Hall of Fame career. Since he started taking steroids when he joined the Yankees (when McNamee said he started shooting up Clemens), he never will be. If Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose (two of the best hitters ever) aren't in the HOF, Clemens never will be.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid you're right, but there's a difference in the crime. Jackson (I don't think he's the HOF case people make him out to be, btw) and Rose took the integrity of the game (meaning games being played to win) into question. That's a much bigger problem than trying to improve your performance. Throwing a game for money does not equal loading a pitch up with spit to make it move-- which is the same type of cheating that roids are. I can support Rose and Jackson being left out, but the likes of Bonds and Clemens make no sense to me.
 
Da Coach said:
Since it is writers who vote for the HOF, bias does play a big part in their voting. Supposedly many writers refused to vote for Steve Carlton (among others), an obvious HOF'er, just because he was an a-hole, and never liked the writers.
Click to expand...

so you mean legitimate journalists and sports writers let their own personal biases, petty grudges, and feelings get in the way of their objective thoughts are writings??

No way........
 
Da Coach said:
Since it is writers who vote for the HOF, bias does play a big part in their voting. Supposedly many writers refused to vote for Steve Carlton (among others), an obvious HOF'er, just because he was an a-hole, and never liked the writers.
Click to expand...

And in the opposite way, Phil Ruzzuto is in the HoF because he played with those great Yankee teams in the 40s and 50s and the New York writers loved him since he was a nice guy. Ignoring the fact that his career batting average was 2.73, only had one season where he had 200 hits and had an OPS of .706 which doesn't even rank in the top 1,000 players OPS wise.
 
Braves4Life said:
So does he now go in the Hall of Fame? He is innocent after all. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Perhaps the debate for the next decade....

IMHO. Clemens gets into the HOF, but not a first ballot HOF'er that a person of his caliber should be. I think that maybe the fifth or sixth ballot would be sufficient. IMO, the Clemens debacle magnifies the accomplishments of Greg Maddux who to the best of my knowledge has not been involved with the steroid controversy. Given what happened in the steroid era, I think that certain players from other eras should be given further consideration for the HOF. Specifically Roger Maris, Cecil Travis, and Ron Santo to name a few. As for Rose, I think that he will eventually get into the HOF via the Veterans Committee. Joe Jackson was truly a Hall of Fame player, but that will not happen. imo
 
If pitchers like Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank and Cy Young are in the Hall of Fame, then you can make a argument steroids users should be in the HOF too. Mathewson, Plank and Cy pitched, predominantly in the Dead-ball era (1900-1919) where pitchers would spit on the ball and add as many foregin substances to the ball so they could distort how the ball moved.

This caused a reverse steroid era, where offenses were so low, home runs became almost extinct. Add to that the fact ballparks sometimes had outfield walls that were as far out as 600ft, the stats back then are so different from any other era. But there are no asterisks.

I think the steroid era should be viewed the same way. If you know they took steroids, and they had a HOF career, put them in and put on their plaque they took steroids. Done.
 
sousaman2089 said:
If pitchers like Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank and Cy Young are in the Hall of Fame, then you can make a argument steroids users should be in the HOF too. Mathewson, Plank and Cy pitched, predominantly in the Dead-ball era (1900-1919) where pitchers would spit on the ball and add as many foregin substances to the ball so they could distort how the ball moved.

This caused a reverse steroid era, where offenses were so low, home runs became almost extinct. Add to that the fact ballparks sometimes had outfield walls that were as far out as 600ft, the stats back then are so different from any other era. But there are no asterisks.

I think the steroid era should be viewed the same way. If you know they took steroids, and they had a HOF career, put them in and put on their plaque they took steroids. Done.
Click to expand...

There were also some pretty good hitters during that era as well. --I know the type of gloves etc-- That is why I think it is better to rate players based on the era that they played. I think that the writers should elect the players who were the obvious HOF'ers during the steroid era and leave it at that. --easier said than done I realize-- Rafael Palmeiro is an example of a player whom IMO does not deserve to be enshrined.
 
Incompetent?

Incompetent?

Incompetant lawyers in one of the top sports trials of the decade? I graduated from engineering school but even I know that Federal Judges are dictatorial about fundamental instructions to the court. I don't like the smell of this. I believe the Rocket found someone above these legal eagles that gave him a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. This is just my nose doing the talking though.
 
Btw, when I talk about questioning Joe Jackson's credentials it comes from the length of his career. He was an excellent hitter, and he got thrown out of the game at 33 he'd just finished his "prime." Presuming he performed in the good - great range for the next 3-5 years, he's an easy call... but a lot of guys turn 33 and fall apart too. No way of knowing which Joe Jackson was.
 
thefish7 said:
Btw, when I talk about questioning Joe Jackson's credentials it comes from the length of his career. He was an excellent hitter, and he got thrown out of the game at 33 he'd just finished his "prime." Presuming he performed in the good - great range for the next 3-5 years, he's an easy call... but a lot of guys turn 33 and fall apart too. No way of knowing which Joe Jackson was.
Click to expand...

This kind of goes back to my statement of best player in a player's respective era. Was Joe Jackson one of the top 3-4 outfielders in his era? (1910-19)
IMO... Definitely!
 
On stats alone, Shoeless Joe Jackson is probably a top 30 player of all time. And when it comes to throwing the World Series, getting 12 hits, batting over .375 in the series, having no errors and even throwing a guy out at home isn't something someone trying to throw a World Series

From what we know today, another player threw money on his bed and Joe never agreed to throw the series for money, but he took the money. The Chicago jury acquitted him and people have read over the stenographic record of the trial and no where is it even close to prove Shoeless Joe threw the series.

But, he did take the money that he found on his bed....

Shoeless Joe Jackson rant done.
 
Just wondering....if Shoeless Joe were alive today - would he ever be able to get a Nike or Reebok contract?
 
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