Friday, April 11, 2008

Glanville on Clemens

Doug Glanville's latest column in the New York Times explains the cocoon, or rather, the eggshell, in which famous ballplayers like Roger Clemens live:
Most baseball players develop a special kind of shell that forms around them as their careers unfold. It probably isn’t that different from an eggshell. It is fragile, but no one is really allowed inside until the player is ready to share his secrets, or until something terrible happens, causing the protective layer to crack . . . he uses this barrier to protect himself from the fickle judgments of the peanut gallery and to make it through his world.

. . . That is where things get a little weird. Bravado kicks in, and inevitably you end up only listening to your own voice or the voices of the ordained elite, those you’ve given the key to get inside. It becomes an alternate reality where even though you think you are saying things that make sense to the outside world, most of your true thoughts and ideas just bounce off the inside coating and end up right back where they started. To make matters worse, as with most catered-to athletes, your inner-circle is probably not giving you opinions substantive enough to allow you to assess yourself honestly.

Glanville believes that Clemens' train wreck of a defamation gambit is borne of living in this eggshell. I agree with him. But I wouldn't lay 100% of the blame at Clemens' feet. As Glanville says, he's been deluded for over 20 years now, and there's probably no hope that he'd ever respond to common sense.

But his lawyer should have. Rusty Hardin should have been the one telling Clemens how reckless his gambit really was and about how badly this could all turn out for him. In other words, he should have been cracking that egg. One never knows what truly goes on behind the veil of attorney-client privilege, but I've seen nothing to indicate that Hardin had any control of his client during those critical days between December and February, and if anything, he was adding fuel to the fire.

(link via Neyer)

1 comment:

Eric Toms said...

I've said it before and I'll say it again; dirty athletes don't know or care about the details of what they take. They care only about the results derived from taking it.

They don't know andro from nandrolone from stanozolol ( I know those are misspelled ) and don't care. They care that taking the juice gets them better results from weight training, helps them recover from injury quicker.

This is the purpose that the Radomskis and Andersons and McNamees of pro sports serve.

We went through all this navel gazing in Canada 20 years ago with Ben Johnson. To this day I don't think he can spell steroid. Having said that I think he's one of the greatest Cdn athletes of my lifetime.

BTW, Reinsdorf is a hypocritical ass.