Clemens-McNamee: A Feud as Old as the Art of Lying
The battle gearing up between Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee (the man who allegedly punctured the skin of Clemens’ ass with a steroid needle) is underway and has no clear end in sight. But before everybody gets swept up in talk of legal strategy, witnesses, and finely crafted statements, we should all take a step back and appreciate how this is one of most interesting and unique legal and PR battles of all time.
Basically, the whole thing amounts to a simple “he said/she said” fight. Two people claim they are telling the truth and that the other is lying. Only one can be right. This sort of thing has probably going on since the beginning of time
. I’m sure that on the banks of the Euphrates River in good ol’ Mesopotamia there were countless times where a shepherd’s sheep west missing and there were only two suspects. Each suspect would claim they were innocent and that the other shepherd was lying.
What’s remarkable about the Clemens-McNamee dispute is that every part of it is playing out in the public eye. More than any event in recent memory (except perhaps O.J.) it doesn’t matter who the judge thinks is telling the truth. The court of public opinion is the only thing that matters. Sure, the judge will be sitting there banging his gavel, but Clemens doesn’t care what he thinks. He only cares what the American people think (and what the Hall of Fame voters will think 5 years from now).
The other remarkable thing about the lawsuit is that there’s really nothing tangible (such as a sheep) at stake. The whole battle is over the abstract idea of Clemens’ “legacy” and “good name.” Usually most defamation suits that are about a “good name” are actually about money, this one really isn’t. Both Clemens’ playing days and big-money endorsement days are over. This might be the first defamation of character lawsuit in the history of the world that actually is solely about the defamation of a person’s character, and not the money affected by that character.
In the end it all comes down to this: Do you believe the testimony of guy who had nothing to gain from talking (and probably a good deal to lose), or do you believe the guy who refused to talk to the people investigating steroids and only issued a delayed and calculated denial after he was implicated?
(Just for the record, I think Clemens took steroids—a lot them. I’m basing this on two things. The first is that Clemens suddenly got really good at pitching at a time when biology suggests other things should have been happening. The second is that arguably the two most dubious things in the Mitchell Report (the paragraphs about Brian Roberts and Andy Pettite) have been proven to be true—so why should we doubt a piece of the Mitchell Report that seems extremely plausible?)
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