The system spawned drug use in baseball
By JASON WHITLOCK
The Kansas City Star

Pro athletes are no different from the rest of us.

They’ll self-medicate over the objections of doctors, spouses, parents, law enforcement, Bud Selig, George Mitchell and self-appointed, hypocritical, never-touched-the-field guardians of baseball’s records book in the media.

At the end of the day, after spending 20 months and Alex Rodriguez’s salary to tell us what we already knew — Roger Clemens and a bunch of other major-leaguers are accused of improving their play and physical fitness chemically — the Mitchell Report avoided making every obvious point except the most important one:

There’s too much money to be made, and we’ve been too conditioned to seek solutions in a bottle, to fix the American sports drug culture with testing and punishment.

Oh, Bud Selig is going to try. Emboldened by his desire to win the approval of “the media guardians,” the tiny sports reporters who believe burning Barry Bonds at the stake will cleanse Babe Ruth’s soul, Bud is ready to lead a war on drugs.

Never mind that his lack of leadership ability is the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction baseball has ever faced. Never mind that there is indisputable evidence across America — from the ’hood to the ’burbs — that you can’t win a war on drugs. Wars destroy lives.

But that’s where we’re headed. Bud wants some of that tough-guy publicity that has made Roger Goodell a hero to NFL fans and sportswriters. Bud fails to realize that absolutely no one would’ve been shocked had Brian McNamee testified that Selig and other owners personally injected their players with steroids.

Goodell passes as Clint Eastwood because we don’t believe Goodell ever went strip-clubbing with Pacman Jones or moonlighted as a personal trainer for Michael Vick’s pit bulls.

Selig and his peers are nothing more than unindicted co-conspirators. They’re as honest and untainted as your typical politician.

Having jealously watched TV cameras spend an entire afternoon focused on Mitchell, Selig and Donald Fehr, Washington politicians now want the Three Blind Mice to bring baseball’s controversy and ratings back to Congress’ studio for a little more grandstanding and pontificating about the virtues of old-time players.

It’s not what we need. There is no easy solution to this problem. You don’t scare drug users straight, especially drug users who have good reason to believe their drug use is improving their health and ability to function.

These aren’t crackheads, coke whores or meth fiends.

These are world-class athletes working with highly educated doctors and trainers. That’s the big difference, to me. You see, everybody wants to pretend the steroids era in baseball started in the 1990s or mid-1980s. That’s a joke.

Non-Olympic athletes figured out how to “properly” use steroids and performance-enhancing drugs in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. But the experimentation and random use of the drugs began long before then.

At the same time professional football, basketball, baseball and hockey players — they’re all on the stuff, don’t kid yourself — learned how to use performance-enhancing drugs, salaries skyrocketed, which means the incentive to use skyrocketed.

Extending your career by any means necessary could add several million dollars to your retirement portfolio. Roger Clemens earned $140,000 in 1985 and $18 million in 2005.

My point is Clueless Bud Selig should spend his time trying to get his athletes to have an open, real discussion with him and the rest of ownership about performance-enhancing drugs and how to curb their use, limit the health risk and level the playing field. Selig should also take the lead among sports commissioners in getting American scientists to have a spirited debate about human growth hormone, a drug some doctors call the “fountain of youth.”

Investigating every athlete and trying to punish some of the athletes mentioned in the Mitchell Report are wastes of time and counterproductive.

For the most part, these guys are not criminals. They’re competitors trapped in the American moneymaking machine, an instrument that cares little about the exploitation of the human body.

Best. Headline. Ever.

Mitchell investigation
would have fallen flat without the feds
By Howard Bryant
ESPN.com

NEW YORK -- Over the 409 pages of the Mitchell report, one singular theme resonates more powerfully than all the rest: Only the enormous power of the federal government allowed former Sen. George Mitchell to produce the often-flawed but powerful document that now stands as baseball's official explanation of the years immediately leading up to and following the 1994 player strike.

Baseball executives Thursday viewed the report as the sport's only chance to begin a new history without flinching from its past, and at many levels, it is an unprecedented document. No American major sports league has ever attempted to reconcile with its past by commissioning a full-scale investigation.

Nor, after years of refusing to acknowledge its players' transgressions, can baseball do much but confront the stark and unflinching details of the report's conclusions: The report claims that seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens has been using steroids and growth hormone for at least the past decade. It also states that Miguel Tejada, who once drove in 150 runs and won the 2002 American League MVP, used steroids and growth hormone. And that a host of key individuals, ranging from two-time World Series-winning managers Tom Kelly and Tony La Russa to Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein and former Phillies manager Lee Thomas, were all at one time or another confronted with a serious steroid issue and chose to avoid it.

And perhaps most appropriate of the era, Mitchell reports in hard detail how the San Francisco Giants' front office of general manager Brian Sabean and owner Peter Magowan did not heed the protestations of athletic trainer Stan Conte, instead enabling Barry Bonds and his entourage to expose the Giants' clubhouse to a steroid dealer.

But without receiving massive amounts of information from government cases involving former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, as well as the federal government's pressuring of Brian McNamee, personal trainer of Roger Clemens, the bulk and reach of Mitchell's report would have been severely limited. And it would have reflected the fears that persisted since the beginning of the investigation that, despite his considerable résumé, Mitchell would not be able to overcome the overwhelming lack of cooperation on the part of the active major league players.

In its 20-month investigation, the Mitchell team produced precious few levels of new information, but the crossover between his investigation and the government's criminal pursuit of steroid and growth hormone rings is perhaps the most revealing element of the document. While the pressure mounted on Mitchell to produce names, the refusal on the part of the players forced investigators, until the government mobilized, to rely on newspaper reports and high-profile books about steroids.

The report is often flawed. Though perhaps the most passionate of subjects, Mitchell's report offered no recommendations to commissioner Bud Selig regarding baseball's record book. And virtually all of his recommendations to strengthen drug testing have been suggested by various anti-drug experts for the past several years.

During the length of the Mitchell investigation, sources throughout baseball expressed pessimism that investigators would be able to overcome the lack of cooperation on the part of the players. Athletic trainers and strength coaches feared a document heavy on names but light on solutions. Team executives braced for a withering assessment of their role in enabling a steroid culture that has leveled the moral legitimacy of the sport.

On Thursday, when the report was made public after 20 months, more than 700 interviews, 115,000 pages of documents and data collection from the computer systems of many of the 30 teams, all parties fears were realized. The result is a document that is at times devastating to an uncooperative Major League Baseball Players Association, the managers and general managers who refused to act on obvious signs of drug use and the 86 players, many of whom through dubious personal associations with individuals in the government's snare, were named in the report.

The government is the power behind the report. Mitchell named eight players -- Marvin Benard, Barry Bonds, Bobby Estalella, Jason and Jeremy Giambi, Benito Santiago, Gary Sheffield and Randy Velarde -- who were all implicated in the BALCO case.

The fear that permeated the investigation's early stages that player silence was stonewalling the investigation was relieved by the April 2007 arrest of Radomski, which created another paper trail -- the final 31 pages of the report are photocopies of canceled checks and mail slips from major league players to Radomski -- that from a player perspective, stands as the dominant portion of the Mitchell report.

Meanwhile, it was the federal pressure on McNamee that allowed Mitchell to include Clemens in the report. The documentation of Clemens' reported steroid use spans nearly eight pages -- pages that will not be long forgotten in baseball history.

The combination of information provided by Radomski and McNamee produced another 53 names in the report.

Moreover, the report did not produce any new information on Bonds. As part of their perjury case against him, the Justice Department is forbidden from releasing additional information regarding his case. Bonds pleaded not guilty Nov. 15 to four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.

Union vs. Management

From the start, Mitchell said he did not expect cooperation from the players' association, and he did not get it. On page SR-7 of the report, Mitchell made clear what was long considered to be his greatest obstacle.

"The Players Association was largely uncooperative. It rejected totally my request for relevant documents," the report stated, adding that, ". . . I received allegations of the illegal possession or use of performance enhancing substances by a number of current players. Through their representative, the Players Association, I asked each of them to meet with me so that I could provide them with information about the allegations and give them a chance to respond. Almost without exception, they declined to meet or talk with me."

Executive culpability

If there existed a feeling among team executives before the report was released that Mitchell would criticize them while not demanding similar accountability of Selig and the commissioner's office, many general managers were, for them, unfortunately vindicated. In the "Summary and Recommendations" section, the report states that the "response by baseball was slow to develop" and that all of baseball from "top to bottom" -- including commissioners, Mitchell said Thursday -- were culpable for allowing the steroid culture to exist.

Mitchell does not, however, cite specific examples in the report that blame Selig or the commissioner's office directly, but offered devastating examples where managers, clubhouse employees and general managers were at fault.

But unlike the player section of the report, which contains each player's name in boldface and a summary of the allegations against him, the elements of the report that deal with executive culpability also allow each executive plausible deniability as to the extent of their knowledge.

• On page 64, Mitchell recounts St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa's 2005 interview on "60 Minutes Wednesday" that when Jose Canseco played for him in Oakland Canseco "would laugh about the time that other guys were spending [in the gym] and how he didn't have to, because he was, he was doing the other 'helper.' He was having help in a different way, you know, the easy way." The report mentions an interview La Russa gave to the San Francisco Chronicle that Canseco got "bigger than ever" and that La Russa "got suspicious and actually confronted him." On page 65, Dave McKay, an A's coach at the time, is quoted in the New York Times and Toronto Sun that Canseco openly talked about steroids.

"But, when La Russa and McKay were interviewed in connection with this investigation," the report reads, "they both denied having direct knowledge that Canseco used steroids" and that "La Russa claimed he had 'exaggerated in his CBS interview that Canseco had never used the word 'helper' and that, in fact, La Russa had never confronted Canseco about his use of steroids.'"

• On page 67, the report recounts a moment when Philadelphia Phillies trainer Jeff Cooper told his general manager Lee Thomas that a player's steroid use was "obvious," and that Thomas "advised Cooper that he should raise the subject with the player directly. Cooper then did raise the issue with the player, who said it was none of Cooper's business. The matter went no further."

• On page 109, the report reads that Houston Astros traveling secretary Barry Waters received a package intended for former Astros infielder Ken Caminiti that contained "glass vials containing a white liquid that he believed to be anabolic steroids" but Waters never reported the incident.

• On page 110, former Orioles infielder David Segui told co-general managers Mike Flanagan and Jim Beattie that he planned a trip to Florida to obtain growth hormone. "No one in the Orioles organization reported Segui's admission of human growth hormone to the Commissioner's Office," the report read. "Segui has since admitted that use publicly."

• On page 110, a visiting clubhouse attendant alerted former Minnesota manager Tom Kelly of a syringe he found on a trash can. According to the report, "Kelly confirmed the incident and said that he did not report the incident to anyone because he felt it 'wasn't any of [his] business' and that it was the other team's issue to address."

• Both Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox officials discussed drug use by pitcher Eric Gagne. According to the report, on Nov. 1, 2006, Boston general manager Theo Epstein sent an e-mail to a Red Sox scout asking, "Have you done any digging on Gagne? I know the Dodgers think he was a steroid guy. Maybe so. What do you hear on his medical?'" The scout, Mark Delpiano, responded in an e-mail that "Some digging on Gagne and steroids IS the issue." The Red Sox acquired Gagne in 2007.

Had players chosen to cooperate with the investigation -- the report claims that 50 active players declined to confront the information Mitchell had -- perhaps certain sections of the report might have been more charitable to them. Gagne declined Mitchell's request to discuss the incident.

And this tactical decision on the part of the players and their union in the eyes of history may make them more culpable for the existence of the steroid era.

Mitchell stated in the report that he attempted to speak with Mark McGwire regarding his infamous 2005 congressional testimony and the allegations by Canseco that he personally injected McGwire with steroids.

"Through his personal lawyer, I asked McGwire to meet with me for an interview about these issues, but he declined to do so," the report said. "I then sent his lawyer a list of specific questions about whether McGwire had ever used steroids or other performance-enhancing substances without a prescription during his major-league career in the hope that McGwire would be willing to provide a response outside the context of an interview. Neither McGwire nor his lawyer responded to the letter."

Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine. He is the author of "Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston" and "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball." He can be reached at Howard.Bryant@espn3.com.

From washingtonpost.com:
The Rocket's Descent
By Thomas Boswell

Friday, December 14, 2007

Now, Roger Clemens joins Barry Bonds in baseball's version of hell. It's a slow burn that lasts a lifetime, then, after death, lingers as long as the game is played and tongues can wag. In baseball, a man's triumphs and his sins are immortal. The pursuit of one often leads to the other. And those misdeeds are seldom as dark as their endless punishment.

Shoeless Joe Jackson, an illiterate outfielder who hit like a demon in the 1919 World Series, but neglected to blow the whistle on his crooked teammates, died with his good name as black as their Sox. Pete Rose, who bet on his team, but never against it, finally confessed. It could be good for his soul, and buys him dinner at my house any night, but may never get him into Cooperstown. Now, they have company: two giants of our time, just as humbled, though no less tarnished.

Yesterday, the only man with seven Cy Young Awards came crashing down the mountain of baseball's gods and ended in a heap beside the only man with seven most valuable player awards. What a sport. Half the players of the last 20 years may have cheated, but who gets nailed? The greatest slugger since Babe Ruth and the greatest power pitcher since Walter Johnson.

Clemens and Bonds now stand before us like twin symbols of the Steroid Age: cheats, liars, ego monsters who were not satisfied with mere greatness and wealth but, as they aged, had to pass everyone in the record book, break every mark and do it with outsize bodies, unrecognizable from their youth, that practically screamed, "Catch me if you can." The whole sport whispered as both walked by. Now, everyone can speak aloud. Not because their guilt has been admitted or proven beyond any doubt, mind you. That would be too clean and easy for us, for baseball.

But the Rocket and Barry stand convicted in the court of public opinion, in Bonds's case by his flaxseed-oil defense and now, in this thunderclap Clemens catastrophe, by the direct I-injected-him-manytimes-in-the-buttocks testimony of his own personal trainer. Clemens denied all charges vehemently. In a statement, he claimed that he is being slandered by "the uncorroborated allegations of a troubled man threatened with federal criminal prosecution."

Yet those nine pages of Mitchell report "slander" have been placed in the public's hand by baseball itself in 311 pages, plus attachments, blessed by the commissioner. Pete Rose had 10 times the chance against the Dowd report than Clemens has against the august Mitchell. What a public-relations mismatch: a tobacco-chewing, hot-tempered Texas right-hander against a former federal judge and Senate majority leader who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. This time, the Rocket's out of gas and the bullpen is empty.

For more than a year, the Mitchell commission on performance-enhancing drugs appeared to be a harmless fishing expedition that might land a few guppies. After all, what can you expect to catch with five-pound test line, a defiant players' union and no subpoena power? Yet, apparently by dumb luck, a baseball drug peddler got caught, then rolled over on an insignificant scoundrel who happened to be Clemens's trainer. In a blink, baseball's blindfolded Ahabs found a whale in their seine. What's this? It feels like, it might be, oh my God, it's Clemens, hooked and gaffed, whether we want him or not.

"Bud, this is George. We're going to need a bigger boat."

Mitchell's opus was intended as many things. It was, of course, a severe front-to-back slam at the union for its 20 years of intransigence on drug testing. The charge is absolutely correct. Still, how self-serving can Commissioner Bud Selig be? He appoints Mitchell, closely affiliated with management in general and specifically with the Red Sox, to spend 21 months finding out who's guilty when he already knows that Don Fehr will get handcuffed in the last chapter.

And, of course, owners, mid-level baseball employees and even Selig get taken to ritual task. Oh, everybody should have acted faster, been smarter, seen the signs. But, gosh, how were we to know? Just because our players showed up for spring training like they'd spent the winter inhaling helium. Just because scouts in their reports and general managers discussing trades evaluated how much weight to give the "juice" factor.

Finally, naturally, because Congress knows a vote-grabber in an election year, the report serves as baseball's proactive shield against further embarrassing visits to Capitol Hill. I'm shocked, shocked, to discover that both Mitchell and Selig -- who, just two hours later, endorsed every recommendation in the report -- are passionately in favor of tougher "best-practices" drug testing. What a stunner. Why, right off the bat, Bud said there would be no more 24-hour warnings to clubs that a random drug test would be held the next day. You mean there were warnings for "random" tests? And MLB could have changed it unilaterally, but it took the Mitchell report before they did it? What impressive self-motivation.

However, the report's predictable functions -- a punch in the nose to the union, a slap in the face to MLB, a predictable recitation of the usual (already revealed) steroid suspects and a T-bone steak to placate congressional watchdogs --were all obliterated by the discovery nobody expected. In the end, the Mitchell report will forever be the Clemens indictment.

Clemens plummeted from icon to fallen idol in a matter of hours. Even if he is innocent, as his lawyer claims, the damage is done. The report devotes nine scathing pages to him, far more than any other player. This is baseball's own officially commissioned history of its most tainted period. And who is its protagonist? Clemens.

How can that ever be undone? If Mark McGwire got only 25 percent of the Hall of Fame vote a year ago because he refused to answer questions before Congress -- and, coupled with Jose Canseco's accusations, looked ashamed and guilty -- then how does Clemens get elected when his own trainer and longtime friend says he injected him more than a dozen times?

Baseball and its fans may require a few days to digest the pairing of Bonds and Clemens, one player so prickly and against the grain, the other the ultimate good ol' boy. But the match is fitting because it makes us face the core of baseball's drug problem. At one end of the cheating spectrum, performance-enhancing drugs provided a last hope for marginal players clinging to a big league job. Their dilemma may touch us. We understand. Perhaps we sympathize. At the other extreme, among the greatest players, we harden our hearts. They had it all and threw it away for more money, more glory and more years in the spotlight.

That harsh judgment is true, but only by half. The fiercer the competitor, the greater the pride, the bigger the talent-- in other words, the more qualities a man possesses that we claim to admire in a champion -- the greater his fury will be at the thought of being beaten, outstripped, surpassed by another man. And the greater the chance that he will defy the rules, risk his health and "do what it takes" to win.

How like a superman to be above the law. How close to invulnerability to disregard your own health. How easy to confuse self-sacrifice for your team for a deeper and governing selfishness. How easy to mistake the sins of ego for the virtues of sport.

Such men would almost be heroic, if they weren't so tragic.

From The New York Daily News: And all along I thought Pettitte was simply enamored with
Clemens' rigorous training regimen...
Yankees' Clemens, Pettitte among players
in Mitchell steroid report

By MICHAEL O'KEEFFE and TERI THOMPSON
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 8:53 PM

Sen. George Mitchell pointed fingers at players, owners
and the league during his press conference Thursday.

Andy Pettitte stretches out with trainer Brian McNamee
as a member of the Astros in 2004.

McNamee surveys the field with Roger Clemens during
spring training in 2000.

Originally published Dec. 13 at 10:04 a.m.

Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, two of the most celebrated pitchers in Yankee history, were supplied and injected with steroids and human growth hormone by a former team trainer, according to the explosive and widely anticipated steroid report released by former Sen. George Mitchell on Thursday.

Brian McNamee, a former Yankee strength trainer who had worked with Clemens in Toronto and joined the seven-time Cy Young winner shortly after Clemens arrived in the Bronx in 1999, described in detail the drug use of his two most famous clients. According to the report, when Clemens was with the Blue Jays, he asked McNamee to supply and inject him with Winstrol. McNamee knew the substance was Winstrol because the vials Clemens gave him were labeled, according to the report. Each incident took place in Clemens' apartment at the SkyDome.

McNamee also described extensive use of performance-enhancing drugs by Clemens during the Yankees' 2000 World Series championship season. Clemens made it clear to McNamee during the latter part of the season that he "was ready to use steroids again." The report said McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labled "Sustainon 250" or "Deca-Durabolin" that he obtained from Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant who cooperated with Mitchell's probe after pleading guilty to steroid distribution.

The reports said he also injected Clemens four to six times with human growth hormone. On each occasion, McNamee administered the injections at Clemens' apartment in New York City.

In August 2001, Clemens again advised McNamee that he was ready to use steroids. Again, McNamee acquired the drugs from Radomski and injected Clemens, this time with only steroids: Clemens apparently did not like using human growth hormone and its required "belly button shot," according to the report.

McNamee said he has no knowledge about whether Clemens used performance-enhancing substances after 2001.

Through his lawyer, Clemens denied the allegations on Thursday.

"It is very unfair to include Roger's name in this report," said Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin. "He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are totally false allegations. Hee has not been charged with anything, he will not be charged with anything and yet he is being tried in the court of public opinion with no recourse. That is totally wrong."

"There has never been one shred of tangible evidence that he ever used these substances and yet he is being slandered today,” said Hardin, who called McNamee a "troubled man."

McNamee said in the report that he injected Pettitte with human growth hormone obtained from Radomski while the pitcher was rehabbing from an elbow injury at the Yankees' training facility in Tampa on two to four occasions.

Among the other big names included in the 409-page report are Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, former Yankees Gary Sheffield, Mike Stanton, Chuck Knoblauch, Denny Neagle, Glenallen Hill and David Justice. Radomski, of course, was a fixture in the Mets clubhouse; former Mets in the report include Paul Lo Duca, Mo Vaughn and David Segui. Also listed are all-time home run leader Barry Bonds and former AL MVP Miguel Tejada.

"Many players are named. Their reputations have been adversely affected, probably forever," union head Donald Fehr said. "Even if it turns out down the road that they should not have been. In my view anyone interested in fairly assessing the allegations against the players should consider the nature of the evidence presented and the reliability of the source."

Mitchell made it clear in his comments and in the report that the blame should be shared by commissioner Bud Selig, who commissioner Mitchell to investigate steroid use, club officials, the Players Association and the players. Mitchell says he does not recommend that Selig punish the players, but that he move forward and try to find solutions for the problem.

"His report is a call to action," said Selig in a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria following Mitchell's briefing at the Grand Hyatt. "If there were problems, I wanted them revealed. If there were individuals who engaged in wrongdoing, I wanted those facts to come to light. If there were recommendations that would improve our drug testing program, I wanted to hear them."

Earl Ward, McNamee's attorney, said he would comment on its contents after reading the report. His client cooperated with Mitchell in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Randy Hendricks, the agent for both Clemens and Pettitte, did not return repeated phone calls and attempts to reach him by E-mail. He told the Houston Chronicle that he would comment after the report was released.

This isn't be the first time McNamee has appeared in a steroid investigation: The Los Angeles Times reported last year that McNamee's name appeared in an affidavit from Grimsley. Former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, who prosecuted several principles in the BALCO case later said the story contained inaccuracies, although he declined to identify them.

Pettitte, who signed a one-year contract with the Yankees this week, said Wednesday in a conference call that he had not worked with McNamee during this offseason, but both Pettitte and Clemens have strongly defended the controversial trainer since he was questioned in a 2001 sexual assault on a woman in a hotel pool during spring training.

The Yankees did not retain him the next season, but Clemens continued to use McNamee as recently as this summer as he prepared to return to the Yankees for a pro-rated $28 million contract. The two-time Cy Young Award winner told The News in May that he had cut ties with the trainer but a source close to McNamee said the two continued to work together.

McNamee had joined Clemens as the pitcher worked out at the University of Kentucky in a bid to get ready to return to the mound.

McNamee, who began working with Clemens in 1997 when he was with the Blue Jays, helped create extensive workouts for both Clemens and Pettitte and repeatedly denied providing steroids to the players, who helped lead the Yankees to one of the most dominant winning streaks in baseball.

"I never, ever gave Clemens or Pettitte steroids," McNamee told The News last year. "They never asked me for steroids. The only thing they asked me for were mere vitamins."

He said in the report that he lied to the reporter.

The former New York City cop was hired as the strength and conditioning coach for the Yankees in 2000 with Clemens' support but was not retained in 2002 after he was questioned by police in connection with the alleged sexual assault in a St. Petersburg hotel. Police said the woman ingested the date-rape drug GHB. Charges were never filed against McNamee.

Clemens' workout regime has long been touted as the reason his career flourished well into his 40s, his fastball showing no signs of tailing off. He often credited McNamee with keeping him at the top of his game.

"My only day off," Clemens once said, "is the day I pitch."

With Nathaniel Vinton and Bill Madden