Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Who would you rather be: Bonds or Clemens?

It seems like months ago that Roger Clemens was the headlining name of the Mitchell Report. Now hes suing people, taping phone calls, and Raphael Palmerioing it on 60 minutes. Clemens seems hell bent on trying to clear his name of this. Meanwhile whatever happened to Barry Bonds? As of October 29, 2007 he is a Free Agent, with no destination in site. He is no longer the headlining story of Steroids, that title now goes to the Rocket. Both of these men's careers have been superb, but now they have been cast under a huge dust cloud of conspiracy.

When talking on 60 minutes Clemens expected a little leeway thrown his direction. He's angry that a 24-year major league career didn't earn him the benefit of the doubt. "You'd think I'd get an inch of respect," he whined to Wallace. "An inch. How can you prove your innocence?" Roger was a free man while everyone and their mothers lambasted Barry Bonds for the past few years. Clemens was doomed once his name showed up that morning on the Mitchell Report. He thinks that since he has over 350 wins and seven Cy Young awards that he should be protected from all of this.

Apparently Clemens hasn't been a big baseball fan as Barry Bonds was chasing the most historic record of all-time while having syringes thrown at him, reporters attack him while with his son, 80 foot fan made signs held up behind him, racial slurs I don't even want to think about thrown in his direction from left-field bleachers, all while still awaiting his fate on lying to the grand jury.

Barry has presumably been through hell and back and hell and back and hell again. He's shown that he wants no part in talking about steroids while Clemens has been pretty jumpy about the topic, although thats after being coached for 12 hours by lawyers.

So far neither one's approached has worked 100% as Bonds has been down a long drawn out road, and still has many twists and turns ahead. Clemens on the other has just sat down for the ride. Maybe both could've taken a note from the page of Lance Armstrong, he's been pretty quiet for some time, maybe its cause he's handled all the right way. Or is there a right way to handle this anymore?

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