Written by Jason McGathey | 06 September 2010

Why are they still after this guy? My brother asked me just the other day, as he and I were subjected to yet another Sportscenter blurb about the pending indictment of Roger Clemens, who cares? He s retired.

Him and Barry Bonds, I note, they' re still after both of those guys hardcore. I think what it boils down to is they don t like either one of them very much.

The they in question is, of course, our federal government. Ever since the steroid scandal broke loose in baseball sometime around 2003, star players have been falling like dominoes with admissions of performance enhancing drug use. Glaring in their absence on this list would be Clemens and Bonds, who were probably if not surely the most dominant pitcher and slugger, respectively, during this decade of alleged runaway juicing.

To be sure, Roger and Barry both appear unrepentant jackasses, regardless of the subject at hand. Neither is going to win a personality award anytime soon. But I find it interesting that a whole slew of other superstars of that era who have also admitted to nothing and let s be clear on this, despite seven years of headhunting, nothing has been proven conclusively with either Clemens or Bonds to date have essentially been left alone, from Jim Thome and Ken Griffey Jr. to Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson. What those guys all have in common is that they are much more likeable than Barry or Roger. No one seriously wants to entertain the notion that a warm and cuddly celebrity is capable of cheating. And even in our age of thirst for scandal, those beloved personalities who either came clean on their own (A-Rod, Jason Giambi) or were outed before they really had a chance to deny anything (Sammy Sosa), or have even been busted after the current steroid policy went into effect (Manny Ramirez, Big Papi, Miguel Tejada), all emerged with their reputations essentially unchanged amid public and political indifference. Even bizarro characters with a penchant for head scratching quotes, a la Jose Canseco and Gary Sheffield, their indiscretions are forgiven, as are the teary eyed hesitations of a Mark McGwire. Yet you have to wonder if the same would hold true of either Clemens or a Bonds if they were inserted into any of the above scenarios.

So what is really the issue here? Maybe that s just it, maybe all the feds ever really wanted out of these two was an admission of something, anything, and then they would have moved on. But I feel their respective personalities play a huge role in this. The closest comparison would be Rafael Palmeiro, who for all intents has disappeared after lying before Congress, then blaming his own teammates upon being caught using. He too comes across as somewhat of a jerk, and alone among all of the above named players who either admitted being dirty or were tested as such, he has suffered some serious reputational fallout. I doubt this is a coincidence. I think the federal government resents the smugness of Barry and Roger, and is determined to make examples of them. True, both retired following the 2007 season, leaving a suspension out of the question yet, murder trials go to court faster than the four years the feds would have had while these two were still playing to make a case. And even back then, the authorities seemed to be shooting well above the target of a relative slap in the wrist like suspension; they wanted to a hang a perjury rap on both from the word go, and would settle for nothing less.

Now, it appears that Clemens might indeed be headed for jail, a fate Palmeiro somehow inexplicably avoided. One thing Roger and Rafael do have in common is that their status as surefire future Hall Of Famers has been all but eradicated, and the same holds true of McGwire, who took a lot of flak at the time yet was at least smart enough to plead the fifth while under oath. And who knows, maybe the same fate awaits Barry in both respects. I really doubt this, however. Watching Sport Reporters one morning, I sit through sportswriter Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe saying he honestly doesn t know which way he s leaning on Bonds when the Hall Of Fame vote comes up. To me this is completely absurd unlike Clemens or Palmeiro or McGwire, Bonds numbers are HOF worthy even if you threw out the entire steroids heyday, which everyone seems to feel ran from roughly 1997 to 2003. Erase the last decade if you like, and Barry still has the resume. Also, in comparison to that other trio of clowns, Bonds has been much smarter in how he s handled himself throughout this entire situation.

Let me state for the record that I like Barry Bonds. His cool detachment and his surliness were authentic, and only served to make him seem all the more superhuman. I always felt that the cheesy I Love Baseball shtick of Sammy Sosa was a fraud, and it turns out I was right. He was also much more concerned with how the media portrayed him than Bonds ever was. Some say it was Barry s fury over the famed McGwire-Sosa home run chase and the attention they received that propelled him to gamble with his career and start juicing, but whatever the case and whatever the legality of his methods his motives were nonetheless athletic ones. Barry was truly bulletproof to the media, and in this his supreme confidence shone through as a legend s rightly should. Canseco tried his hardest to paint a bad boy portrait, but only came off as a tremendous dork, and an overly sensitive one at that. Others, such as A-Rod and Sheffield, paid tremendous lip service to how indifferent they were to the press, even as their play and their demeanor belied this, seeming to hinge upon how hot or cold they were running in the papers. Clemens and Palmeiro became hostile a-holes anytime someone suggested they were hostile a-holes. But none of the above was true of Bonds, who would typically offer a chuckle and a cocky wisecrack as he suggested they write whatever they like, he couldn t be bothered to care. And his actions backed this up.

Tim Kurkjian of Baseball Tonight recently stated that Albert Pujols is the third best hitter of all time, behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. I wonder where in his projections Barry places, exactly, who by any sane standard was well on his way to the Hall Of Fame before even the faintest whiff of steroid scandal entered the picture. Barry might not have been one of the top three hitters of all time although even here, I would beg to differ but he was certainly right up there when it came to greatest all around players. And as far as his own generation is concerned, it s absurd to suggest there is anyone else in the same galaxy.

At the conclusion of the 1996 season, Barry was 31 years old and had already amassed 334 home runs to go with 380 steals. In the season just concluded, he became just the second 40/40 player ever in those categories, and was already one of just a few players ever with career marks topping 300/300. He had led the league in walks for three consecutive seasons, had six campaigns of more than 100 RBI and six Gold Gloves for fielding excellence to go with his three MVP awards. He had led the Pittsburgh Pirates to three consecutive playoff appearances, narrowly missing the World Series in each (notoriously, the hapless Bucs have not had a winning season in the 18 years since he left), then came to San Francisco and steered the Giants to an agonizing 1993 where they won over 100 games yet somehow missed the postseason.

That we are innocent until proven guilty is one of the bedrock concepts this country was built upon, but for the sake of argument let s concede there is an overwhelming amount of visual evidence that Bonds must have been juicing from the late 1990s up until they began testing for steroids in 2004. Fair enough. Yet if are going to make that assumption, then you have to admit everything he did after they began testing as legitimate, untainted evidence. So tack on too another 104 home runs from the age of 39 onward, a batting title, three seasons of leading the leagues in walks including a mind boggling 232 of them in 2004. That he often did this with virtually no protection around him in the lineup is witnessed by his leading the league in intentional walks each of his last five full seasons, as they d clearly rather pitch around even a 42 year old and purportedly washed up Barry than anyone else in the lineup. And nobody has yet come up with a reasonable explanation for how in his final season he managed to reach base nearly half the time he came to the plate, yet another statistic he led the league in for an extended run there at the end, in this case his last six complete years.

For the guy who was allegedly a stat whore, it seems curious that he would walk away just 65 hits shy of 3000, a mere 4 runs batted in short of 2000, and within striking distance of the all time runs scored record. As it stands he is the all time leader in home runs and walks. He compiled an impressive 8 Gold Gloves total, and became the only player ever with 400 bombs and 400 steals, then topped himself a few years later as the lone entrant in the 500/500 club.

All that s open for debate is that hotly contested middle third of his career, when a player is supposed to be in his prime anyway. Under siege are his 4 consecutive MVP awards from 2001-04 and the record 73 home runs he compiled in 01. For the sake of argument, assume he would average his statistical worst season ever, which would be the rookie year of 1986 when he hits 16 dingers and strikes out 102 times in 113 games. You can look up his career byline and see that he progressively walked more and struck out less as he got older, and it s never really been explained how steroids should take the credit for fixing holes in your swing, but still, in the name of debate let s assume this season from 1997-2003. Even so that s another 112 balls that left the park, which puts him comfortably well above 500 for his career. And how to explain away all those stolen bases, or awards for fielding excellence, exactly? The best any critic can mumble is some lame explanation about steroids enabling a player to recover from injuries from faster and thus play more games.

If steroids were as rampant as some ex-players have insisted, then everyone had their best shot at Bonds and couldn t match him anyway. Even if only ten percent of the sluggers were juicing, and if Barry were included in this and remember, he has neither admitted to nor been proven guilty of anything then for four consecutive seasons he was completely a league above that ten (or whatever) percent regardless. The record for MVP awards before Barry came along was three, which he matched in 1993, his seventh season; tack on those four years and he has seven such trophies, often hitting for teams whose offensive protection surrounding him was mediocre to say the least. Look at footage from those years and what strikes is the incredible quickness of his hands. This is somewhat of a strange area of the zone to represent a player s wheelhouse, but any pitch anywhere near his hands was absolutely toast. I m sorry, but there is no substance on planet Earth that can enhance your ability in that regard, that is one hundred percent skill. I think there is some truth to the theory that steroids enabled these players to stay healthy witness McGwire, who went from back to back injury plagued seasons of 9 home runs apiece in the early 90s, to launching balls out of the ballpark again as he mostly stayed off the disabled list. But steroids can t teach anyone to hit who doesn t have that ability already, and for proof of this you need look no further than the failed careers of Ozzie Canseco and Jeremy Giambi, neither of which had a shred of the talent their more famous brothers possessed. The younger Giambi in fact has admitted to ingesting performance enhancing substances during the same period Jason did, and it had no discernible impact on his numbers whatsoever.

Yet this entire article indeed, most of the argument surrounding steroids in baseball, period is rendered moot by the simple fact that Major League Baseball did not get around to banning these substances until 2004. This despite a number of owners admitting they knew all along the players were taking them, and claiming that commissioner Bud Selig had ample knowledge, too. Of course, it wouldn t be the first time that profit hound Selig has retroactively taken great strides to make it appear that he cares about the game, even if it means the players look bad at his expense. Who can forget the 2002 All-Star game, when managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly went to Bud as the game ran to extra innings and explained that they were running out of pitchers. Even at the time my friends and I were howling that you put in a position player, whatever it took to finish the game. Instead, he declares the game a tie, and then when public outrage hits he claims the reason for the tie is that the players weren t trying hard enough. In 2003, he wanted to have the bases changed to yellow and plastered with the image of Spider-Man in the name of marketing revenue only at the eleventh hour was he persuaded from doing so, then wanted to turn around and deliver pompous speeches about preserving the integrity of the game and taking credit for nixing this.

And so, if you ask me, the one figure I would really get behind persecuting in all of this, if anyone, would be Selig. Hall Of Fame voting sports writers are asked to play God now on a player s fate, when the individual actually controlling their fate was indifferent. To exclude a player from the Hall now based on what might or might not have happened during a period when the substance in question wasn t even banned seems absurd. It would be the same as giving thumbs down to a candidate for the number of times he mowed down a middle infielder while breaking up double plays, because it wasn t very nice.

For that reason alone, what appeared to be a very complex issue is really cut and dried. Most of these figures were not going to find themselves enshrined anyway, from Canseco to Giambi to Tejada to Ortiz. The rest are either above suspicion or have such impeccable resumes apart from the steroids era that you can t possibly exclude them. To me the only real question marks are players who were dumb enough to get busted after the ban went into place, which targets primarily Rafael Palmeiro and possibly Manny Ramirez. That, and previously borderline candidates such as Fred McGriff or Jeff Bagwell are now shining in a whole new light. But if you want to form an educated opinion about Congress s favorite two sacrificial lambs, consider this: Roger Clemens was 40-39 in his last four seasons with the Boston Red Sox , right before GM Dan Duquette made his infamous quote about the Rocket being in the twilight of his career and let him go, after which he became mysteriously unhittable again. He would have had to have averaged more than 15 wins a season somehow until the age of 40 to reach 300, which seems a considerable stretch without chemical enhancement. He also has not made any new friends with his willingness to sell out old ones during this ordeal. Then again, he too nonetheless found a way to post an 18-4 mark in 2004, and lead the league with a 1.87 ERA the next year. You can joke all you want about Barry not having any friends to lose we know if nothing else that Jeff Kent is not among them but his accomplishments are simply too great to ignore. You could throw out the entire back half of his career if you like and what would emerge, even so, is a cocksure, untouchable superhuman who knows just what he was: the greatest all around player of his generation, and possibly all time. One destined for the Hall Of Fame regardless and, mark my words, one who will crush this rap just as he did so many inside fastballs.

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