I read the news today, oh boy ...

If you'd asked any baseball fan this time last year if they believed there was any chance that Roger Clemens would avoid the Hall of Fame, you probably would have gotten a does-not-compute look, even from those who hated him. "Dude," they'd say. "It's fuckin' Clemens. Seven Cy Youngs, over three hundred wins. Are you high? First ballot, no problem."

Now? Clemens is impaled on his own ego like a fish on the end of a harpoon, wriggling desperately, yelling louder and louder in hopes that he can somehow drown out the voices who call him a fraud, a cheater, the voices that hold the growing ring of truth.

Nothing has been proven. Not the steroid use, not the perjury, not the decade-long extramarital affair with a batshit crazy country singer. It's all from unnamed "sources," those who have reason to drag him down to protect themselves. But the Rocket has been red-glaring all over the place, basically screaming "I'm Roger Fucking Clemens, how DARE you say shit like this about me?!" As the cameras rolled in the Congressional hearing room he casually threw his wife, the mother of his four sons all preposterously burdened with names starting with the letter K (strikeout code) under the bus, claiming that she was the one using human growth hormone, not him. And Debbie Clemens, perfectly blonde and groomed and beautiful as only professional athletes' wives can be, smiled blandly as she listened to her husband of twenty-three years trash her, instead of freaking out and giving him a cockpunch like he deserved.

I still remember seeing Roger pitch for the first time in 1986 in Yankee Stadium, being in awe of the screaming fastball, the bad-assed attitude. My friends would tease me about being a Yankees fan but being madly in love with a member of the Boston Red Sox. One of the happiest days of my life was the day he signed with the Yankees for the first time. I didn't delude myself that he was a god who walked among the mortals; I'd heard too many stories about him being an insufferable prick, his "money uber alles" mindset. But to watch him pitch was watching history, knowing I was looking at the best of the best. To see him now, his face lined, his mouth set grimly as he walks past the media, makes me sad. If Congress' case goes through, he stands a better chance of going to prison than the oft-maligned Barry Bonds, the Pete Rose of his era.

Somehow I don't think that was the legacy he wanted to leave.