Scott Allan’s World

Who do you think lied? Clemens or McNamee? Perhaps they’re both lying. I really don’t care. What a huge waste of time. We are at war, the border is dangerously open, the economy is struggling, Congress is spending too much money, and all Congress can do is try to discredit maybe the best pitcher of all time or try to find out why the Patriot’s spy tapes were destroyed by the NFL commissioner. What a joke. As a society we are so obsessed with grandstanding and playing “perjury gotcha” that we lose sight of what is important. We just love to see a celebrity’s life ruined. I guess it makes us feel better about ourselves by tearing another person down. Apparently if you can’t prove someone committed a crime or if no crime was committed at all, you just have to catch them lying about something, anything instead. **See Scooter Libby.

When it comes to professional sports, what really matters is that everyone plays by the rules. It sure is hard to guarantee that when it’s not enforced. As in any competitive arena, people will always try to gain an advantage and some will bend the rules if allowed. When you knowingly look the other way for 20 years, how can you decide to go on a witch hunt and punish a select few who were extremely successful instead of concentrating how to stop the rampant behavior? For most of the 20 years, performance enhancing substances were neither illegal nor against the rules of baseball.  The Mitchell Report fed our appetite for dirty laundry without regard for the consequences. I bet more than half of the players used performance enhancing drugs, but all of a sudden they decide to enforce the rules because a few athletes were caught and embarrassed the league. This is only a surprise to the very naive. What’s really important is finding a way to stop this going forward. Trying to figure out who cheated during this era is really pointless and is especially pointless for Congress. Believe me, the Mitchell Report didn’t even scratch the surface of who cheated. Whether or not Roger Clemens is one of the hundreds or thousands of baseball players who used growth hormone or testosterone to recover from injuries or increase the length of his career, I really don’t care. Holier than thou Congress better be careful of the glass house they live in.