Well Good

Roger and wife, natnotes.com

Bravo:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2011/07/clemens_defense.html

I was never much of a Roger Clemens fan, although he was certainly an interesting figure in baseball.  However, the idea that a man who spent almost his whole life (so far) focused on mastering the art of pitching should end up in his late forties facing the possibility of actually going to jail because he equivocated to Congress, well that's just amazingly absurd.  To Congress?  How is lying to liars any kind of crime?  Not that one shouldn't tell the truth under oath and all, but really, there ought to be some perspective, somewheres, otherwise the whole public show of law and trials and all just becomes so entirely kabuki that order is utterly molecularized, which anyways may be more the case than we hate to think.  So, as the curtain comes down on this, it is actually a wonderful, optimistic conclusion we are delivered.  Read the article cited at the start.  The prosecutor got the trial quashed by introducing evidence he was already ordered not to introduce, in his opening statement no less.  It's over.  Clemens will probably never get into the Hall of Fame--none of the steroids guys will apparently, even though Ty Cobb is in there.  That's just a Hall of Fame for ya.  And I'd think Clemens is probably out of the advertising bidness pert much.  So what.  If he wants to work with young pitchers, I'll bet he'll land a job one some club or other.  Maybe the Dodgers could use him.  He's in reasonably decent shape.  Better than O.J., another case of some justice being delivered albeit out of left field and probably more Roy Bean than William O. Brennan.   As Charles Pierce points out, the steroid scandal is not the Black Sox scandal: the men who took steroids were, after all, trying to win.

Meanwhile, Kyle won his 100th Nascar race at the age of 26.  Personally, I liked the big 100 flag he paraded around the track with better than Kez's attempt to bogart the stars and stripes.  The other Kyle grumbles about this, but Mr. Busch isn't saying he's Kyle Petty's daddy.  And since these guys race till they're past 50, Mr. Busch might well hit some of those bigger milestones before he's done.  I thought Mr. Harvick, yesterday, was rather pathetic, whining about how he wasn't allowed to wreck Mr. Busch as Mr. Busch drove past him to victory, never touching his car, not doing anything but out-racing him.  Maybe Mr. Harvick ought to just give it a rest, or go home and watch that moment last year when he wrecked Busch at Homestead, gratuitously as he said later, and savor Mr. Busch somewhat desperately departing his flaming car before he got incinerated.  The film is forever.  "He raced me like a clown," Harvick smiled later, to the reporters.  Well, yesterday in NH, it was Busch who was racing the crying clown I guess.  Busch knew it too.  "It wasn't passing Stenhouse that won it," he said.  "It was passing Harvick."  Yep.