Staff Editorial

The Oscars are coming up pretty soon, and the Bullet would like to acknowledge two actors that, after giving wonderful performances in front of the camera, were not nominated: strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee and seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Roger Clemens.

For those of you who do not watch ESPN all day, or any other news program for that matter, Clemens was named in the “Mitchell Report.” The report, released after 20 months of investigations and interviews, was compiled by U.S. Senator George Mitchell and stated that 89 current and former members of Major League Baseball have been linked to using steroids and/or human growth hormones.

The report states that McNamee had injected Clemens with steroids in both Toronto and New York, when playing with the Blue Jays and Yankees respectively. After the report surfaced Clemens completely denied the allegations that he ever used steroids or HGH and said that McNamee was lying about it all.

Fast forward two months. After dancing around the subject of who was telling the truth, both McNamee and Clemens were put in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. After hours of questioning and both sides being able to state their cases, it was still nearly impossible to determine who was lying.

To be honest, who cares now? McNamee is a nobody, and, even if Clemens is found not guilty, how is he supposed to get his reputation back?

The whole report was unnecessary from the beginning. All it did was put baseball back a few years. Now kids that are growing up idolizing guys like Brian Roberts are left disappointed, and for guys like me that have been baseball fans since birth, Mo Vaughn, David Justice and Rafael Palmeiro have lost much of our respect.

Does it matter whether Clemens or McNamee is guilty? The answer is no. Baseball’s reputation has been officially tarnished. So should we stop loving it? Another no, but living through the steroid era will always hold a heavy place in our hearts.