More than Clemens' stats are being exposed

At this point, I’m neither shocked nor particularly distressed by the idea of a seven-time Cy Young winner doing steroids and human growth hormone. Actually, the image of Roger Clemens -- one of the great bullies ever to take the mound -- dropping trou to be injected by a former New York City cop “approximately four times in the buttocks,” according to the Mitchell Report, provides, if nothing else, some comic relief in a relentlessly sordid saga.

ROCKET SCIENTIST

How did Roger Clemens get here? See the timeline of events and look back at his career in pictures.

If Clemens did it -- and I’d double down on the prospect of his guilt -- he’s just one of many. True, with 354 wins on his major league resume, Clemens’ prospective conviction would corrupt the record books. But so what? Baseball’s sacred sense of numerological posterity was tainted years ago. If there’s reason to believe the home run record is bogus, then should you really care about the ninth winningest pitcher in baseball history?

Actually, yes. Again, not all sins of the performance-enhancing variety are created equal. And what so offends about Clemens is the notion -- long propagated by his minions, his promoters (the Yankees, especially), and the man himself -- that his success owed nothing to chemistry and everything to character. Unlike anyone else in the contemporary baseball, Clemens’ longevity was portrayed as a morality tale. The success he enjoyed late in his career owed even less to his talent than to his work ethic. He was supposed to be a better pitcher because he was a more fiercely diligent one. What nonsense.

After the 1996 season, a campaign that saw Clemens go 10 wins against 13 losses, Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette declined to re-sign him, famously declaring Clemens to be in the “twilight of his career.” Duquette wasn’t exactly going out on a limb. By 34, most power pitchers are considerably less than they were in their youth.

But Clemens had neither the inclination, nor perhaps the courage, to develop a finesse game. Rather, he was determined to go out as he arrived, a power pitcher. Against every reasonable expectation, he went 41-13 in his next two seasons with the Blue Jays, before landing with the Yankees, where the engines of hype went into overdrive.

“The hardest worker on the team,” Mike Stanton, another Yankees pitcher named as a steroid user in the Mitchell Report, told the Houston Chronicle. “Everything you could want in both a pitcher and a teammate.”

“Probably the hardest-working player in the game today,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman told the Boston Globe in 2001.

“Work ethic personified,” said the Newark Star-Ledger.

“When he went to Toronto, he was a completely different pitcher,” Jim Kaat, a former Yankees broadcaster and himself a 283-game winner, once told Newsdsay. “Whatever he did there, rejuvenated him.”

So what, exactly, was that? Well, first of all, he met Brian McNamee, a former cop working as the Blue Jays strength and conditioning coach. In the summer of ’98, with the baseball world transfixed by the counterfeit exploits of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, “Clemens asked McNamee to inject him with Winstrol, which Clemens supplied,” according to the Mitchell Report. “McNamee injected Clemens approximately four times in the buttocks over a several-week period with needles that Clemens provided. Each incident took place in Clemens’ apartment at the SkyDome.”

McNamee injected him again -- four to six times -- in the 2000 season with the Yankees, and another four to six times with human growth hormone. In August 2001, “McNamee injected Clemens with Sustanon or Deca-Durabolin on four to five occasions at Clemens’s apartment.”

It’s worth noting that McNamee swore to these statements as a federal witness under penalty of perjury. Just the same, none of these allegations make Clemens much different than probably hundreds of other major leaguers who succumbed to the same temptations. Rather, what makes Clemens so insufferable is a brand of hubris worthy of federal prosecution.

It wasn’t enough to be a better pitcher. He had to frame himself as a better man.

“He will do more before he goes out to start warming up,” McNamee once said, “than some guys do all week.”

Typical was Clemens’ bragging to the great sportswriter Pat Jordan, “We been working while everybody else been sleeping.”

More often than not, braggarts are bullies, too. Yankee fans will recall Clemens throwing at Derek Jeter and Scott Brosius. Mariners fans remember him headhunting for Alex Rodriguez in the 2000 ALCS. Earlier that summer, he concussed Mike Piazza with a fastball that connected with the insignia on his batting helmet. At the time, Piazza was 7-for-12 with three homers against Clemens.

No surprise, really. Bullies need an edge. Some months later, in the World Series, Clemens broke Piazza’s bat and famously flung a shard of it at him as the catcher lumbered to first.

It was a little like watching Mike Tyson bite Evander Holyfield’s ear. In that moment, you saw the worst of the guy. Rage, after all, is an admission of failure.

Still, it was good for a goof up in the press box: Roger’s ‘roid rage.

But now, with Clemens under federal indictment for perjury and obstruction, it doesn’t seem so funny. Rather, the joke -- if there was one -- was Clemens' work ethic.