Steroids: Say it ain’t so, Roger

last updated 8 January 2015

Even for Washington, it was a bizarre spectacle, said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Last week’s congressional hearing on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball was an exercise in farce, not fact-finding. In four hours of testimony, seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens indignantly—and unconvincingly—denied that he’d used steroids and human growth hormone to keep his career going into his 40s. Just 5 feet away sat Brian McNamee, his former personal trainer and chief accuser, repeating claims that he’d personally injected Clemens with the stuff. Before and during the hearing, “star-struck” lawmakers fawned over the pudgy pitcher. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) breathlessly asked Clemens what uniform he would wear to the Hall of Fame; Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) purred over the Rocket’s “stamina and body build.” Weirdest of all was the grilling about the after-effects of Clemens’ alleged shots. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) wanted to know more about “the palpable mass on his buttocks.” Tom Davis (R-Va.) asked, “Do you recall any bleeding through your pants in 2001?”

More disturbing than the fixation on Clemens’ butt, said Harvey Araton in The New York Times, was the brazen partisanship. Most of the Democrats lit into the pitcher as a disgrace to the American pastime while Republicans assailed McNamee as a liar and drug pusher. No surprise there, said Stephen Metcalf in Slate.com. “Clemens is a rich and politically well connected Texan” who pitched for the Houston Astros, deep in the heart of Bush country. When he was named in last fall’s Mitchell Report on baseball’s steroid problem, he “immediately received a consolatory phone call” from his good friend, former President George H.W. Bush. This backdrop turned the questioning of Clemens into a political tug of war, leaving committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to admit afterward, “I’m sorry we had the hearing.”

He should be, said King Kaufman in Salon.com. What, precisely, was the purpose of this circus? “If Clemens is accused of a crime, let him stand trial in court, where there are standards of evidence and he has the right to face and cross-examine his accusers.” Fine—it’s about time a white athlete went on trial, said Todd Balf in the Los Angeles Times. Barry Bonds and Olympic track star Marion Jones, two black athletes accused of using steroids, have been aggressively prosecuted, and Jones was recently sentenced to six months in jail. Now Clemens has given sworn testimony that contradicts that of several other people. Will the government prosecute him for perjury—or is it only interested in athletic cheats who are black?