Barry Bonds And Roger Clemens

I was worried about something I know I'm not supposed to worry about because, well, just because. I was worried that when all was said and done, Barry Bonds would end up serving 3 years at Pleasanton which would be some kind of concession on the part of the Department Of Injustice (Mukasey probably wants him busting up rocks at Vacaville), while the FBI investigation into Roger Clemens's identical "crime" would be tossed into the garbage by Michael Mukasey. I was sure of that. And you know why I was sure of that. Because the Mitchell Report listed a number of alleged steroid abusers but only three players' capsule comments carried the weird caveat that "a career federal prosecutor tends to believe that the allegations against this player are false." Those three players were: Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Brian Roberts.

Sesame Street time. These three things are not like the others. No, Clemens, Pettitte and Roberts happened to be the only White stars currently active who were named in the report.

Clemens got up there in front of Congress and lied through his teeth. Clemens is an asshole. He's so much of an asshole that he aliented his two best friends: Pettitte and Jerry McNamee, his present accusers. Clemens, though, is merely an asshole. He is not a stupid man. Why would he do something that stupid? Because he had to know that if Mukasey was going to allow Miers and Bolten to defy a subpoena, is there a chance he'd allow Clemens, another close friend of George W. Bush, to have any stress whatsoever?

That's Clemens. What of Bonds? This was really bugging me because I like Barry Bonds. There are only three possible "greatest hitters" of all time and they are Bonds, Ruth and Josh Gibson and to ascertain whether or not Gibson is #1, #3 or at worst #10 is going to take some math no one has bothered with yet. I like that Bonds is cranky. I like that he's a depressive like me. I like that he's intelligent. I like that I've gotten to enjoy the performance of one of the best. I like that liking him allows me to be so contrary about something so obvious. I like that in his first breakthrough year, 1990, I had cashed a challenge bet of the Pirates+10 wins at 5/1 versus the Mets (my favorite team--this was tough to do!) with Bonds helping them just run away and hide in the NL East. I don't believe that steroids were a huge part of anything Bonds (or Clemens for that matter achieved). I list Mike Gimbel's Historical RPA Ratings (tm) of the top ten Major League hitters and pitchers of all-time. These ratings have been normalized for era, so having played in a so-called "steroid era" is irrelevant to what's here.

HITTERS

1. Barry Bonds
2. Babe Ruth
3. Ted Williams
4. Mickey Mantle
5. Hank Aaron
6. Stan Musial
7. Willie Mays
8. Lou Gherig
9. Ty Cobb
10. Mel Ott

PITCHERS

1. Walter Johnson
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Grover Cleveland Alexander
5. Pedro Martinez
6. Lefty Grove
7. Randy Johnson
8. Tom Seaver
9. Cy Young
10. Christy Mathewson

I think that both Bonds and Clemens should be first ballot Hall-Of-Famers with no bullshit. I also think that neither have any business spending time in Stony Lonesome. I assumed that Clemens wouldn't and Bonds would. But, at least for today--NOT SO FAST.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AtNWKd2Ar2Sl0UoMwFNKTNwRvLYF?slug=li-bondsdismissalhearing022908&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Hello! It seems like good sense took hold of Judge Susan Ilston. It was a federal court in San Francisco, though. If Gerorge W. Bush can lie his country into a war, he can get self-same Michael Mukasey to twist a few arms to get a change-of-venue in order to hold the trial in David Duke's rec room.

I also saw an important number tonight. (minus 700). In my next post I'll explain what that has to do with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. I'll probably write the nicest stuff about Obama I've ever written since the 2004 speech that scared me -- we atheists get a little froggy when a Democrat thunders about a "Mighty Gawd" -- and made me think that Obama was going to send the Church Police after me. Even if that was possibly true then, it's irrelevant now, anyway. Even if Obama ran with Lieberman and formed a Church Police force with Pat Robertson running it, they'd never find me if they searched for the next 50 years. And that's only modest paranoia, nieces and nephews. There is no mistaking that Obama's coterie does indeed include Lieberman and Robertson.

Now, I have to bear in mind that number (minus 700) and that I once wrote on this blog that I believed of every candidate in the race for the presidency I could only assign one of them a non-trivial probability of starting a global thermonuclear war: John McCain.

I still believe that and I'll pick it up with the next post.

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