Clemens' true colors coming to light
Posted: Friday, May 02, 2008 2:50 PM
Somewhere, Roger Clemens’ remaining fans are wondering how their hero could have gotten into so much trouble. He was the perfect warrior, which meant he was also a perfect person, an upstanding family man and staunch defender of traditional family values. That’s what he told us, and fans know that their heroes would never tell a lie.
It’s hopeless to try to convince fans that great athletic talent does not confer on its possessor great character. You may as well try to convince an aspiring suicide bomber that there are not 70 virgins awaiting him in heaven.
Some day, a professor somewhere will conduct a study on why we god up athletes like we do. I’m pretty sure they’ll find it’s connected to the same belief circuitry as religion. Once we buy into the premise of the hero, everything else just falls into place.
What’s interesting about Clemens is that he acts as if he believed this nonsense, too. And even as his carefully crafted image disintegrates around him, he’s showing no signs of understanding why this is happening to him.
This week has been particularly punishing. It began with country music singer Mindy McCready admitting that Clemens had taken a hankering for her when he spotted her singing karaoke in a Florida club. She was 15 at the time, and he conducted an affair with her for a decade. At the same time, there were stories that he was a lousy tipper and a freeloader. In mid-week, we learned that one of John Daly’s many ex-wives was another of Clemens’ special pals. On Friday, The New York Daily News added an ex-stripper to Clemens’ rapidly growing list of lovers.
The Daily News also reported that the pitcher’s friends are trying to tell him to cut his losses and run, but Clemens’ clueless cadre of advisors are keeping him insulated from a head-on collision with a much-needed reality check.
Certainly, Clemens’ defamation lawsuit against his former trainer, Brian McNamee, is all but dead. Clemens hasn’t dropped it yet, but legal experts are unanimous in saying it’s a lost cause. His argument is that McNamee has damaged the pitcher’s squeaky-clean image. But it’s hard to damage a reputation that no longer exists.
The wonder in all of this is that anyone was surprised at any of it. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the exceptional athlete – or anyone in a position of power and privilege – isn’t the one who breaks all of society’s rules, but the one who honors them.
These are the people who have won the evolutionary and genetic sweepstakes, and while society is telling them no, no, no, their hormones and wiring are telling them to go for it. And why shouldn’t they? They almost never get caught.
So, it’s not that Clemens thinks the rules didn’t apply to him. He doesn’t even know what the rules are. He’d been treated like a god for so long, he thinks that’s what he is.
And this is where people who think that athletes are scrutinized more closely today than they used to be are so wrong. The reality is they are more celebrated and less scrutinized than ever. Every great play is shown endlessly on the highlight shows, accompanied by gushing anchors heaping superlatives on them. SportsCenter, which used to present the day’s sports news, is not a 30-minute hyperbole fest punctuated by the heroes themselves selling products that are guaranteed to make the purchaser just like them.
The story is always about what a great performance a player put in. The assumption is that anyone that good must also be a superior human being. The Greeks had the same problem with their heroes, who so often came to tragic ends. The difference between the ancient Greeks and us is that they expected the hero to blow it. They even had a name for it – hubris.
They didn’t assume that great talent equaled great character. Why we do is beyond me. Maybe it’s because of the idea attached to many religions that holds that if people are successful, it’s because god likes them. We hear it often enough from athletes who keep saying they do great things because god wants them to. Maybe we’ve actually come to believe that.
And maybe it’s just the way we are.
All I know is that Clemens got a free pass for nearly forever. A lot of people knew he wasn’t the nicest guy or the most virtuous guy in the world, but we didn’t say anything because it had nothing to do with his performance.
It’s only when he used virtue as a defense that his character became an issue. He held himself up as an exemplar of everything good and right and holy, which made it relevant.
One day, an athlete will get up on a witness stand and say, “Yeah, I chase skirts. You betcha. It’s fun and cholesterol-free. I drink, too. Sometimes a lot. I even did some drugs because, what the hell, everybody else was and nobody said I couldn’t. Now y’all go and get yourselves a life and leave me alone, y’hear?”
I could live with that.
