Roger Clemens: Baseball's Eliot Spitzer
Here on day two of the Roger Clemens Infidelity Scandal And Schadenfreude Festival Of '08, it's becoming more clear that the brawny former Yankees ace pitcher and full time jerk did in fact cheat on his wife with the wild country singer Mindy McCready. Because now she's admitted it! McCready said the two did have an ongoing affair, although the sex didn't start until she was of legal age. They first met when she was only 15, (Miley Cyrus joke). But the most entertaining aspect of this scandal is how Clemens—heroic, honored, self-righteous, dismissive of critics, a King of New York—is turning into an uncanny baseball version of another recently fallen hero: Eliot Spitzer.
Spitzer, New York's Love Guv, and Clemens both had reputations as brawlers, who made tons of enemies on their way to the top. The people on their side loved them, but outside of their own teams they were widely despised. Clemens wisely spent his career in the American League, where designated hitters could take his turn at bat so he wouldn't have to risk getting beaned in retaliation for his frequent knockdowns of opposing batters.
Furthermore, both men suffered from huge bouts of hypocrisy. Spitzer prosecuted prostitution rings while patronizing them at the same time. Clemens was always boasting of his hard work, diet, and exercise program, while (IN ALL LIKELIHOOD) being shot up with steroids by his trainer. When his trainer finally told the story, Clemens continued to deny everything, which he does to this day, even as most of the other players named have implicitly or explicitly admitted when the steroid allegations against them were true. And, he filed a defamation suit against the trainer, which brought Clemens' entire reputation under legal review. The Post reports today that the pitcher had at least two other women on the side in addition to McCready, so take your sanctimonious family man act and inject it into your buttocks along with lots of testosterone, Roger Clemens.
An added bonus: like the lawyers who roped their careers to Spitzer's only to see them crumble along with him, Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, is going to come out of this looking like a bald-faced liar, like his client. Just yesterday he said there was no sex between Clemens and McCready; today, she's admitting it all over the place.
Spitzer was at least fighting on the side of righteousness. For Clemens, that was only true if he was pitching for your team. Among those enjoying Clemens' downfall the most: this young man: