by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Features Editor

March 13, 2008

Roger Clemens was not the only major league player named in the Mitchell Report, the exhaustive investigation released in December on the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. He was, however, one of the most prominent.

Clemens, the active leader in wins with 354 and seven Cy Young Awards over his 24-year career, has tried to clear his name, with appearances on 60 Minutes and testimony before a congressional committee studying the issue in February. The results have been, in a word, unconvincing.

Before all this came spinning out of control, Jonathan Mayo, a senior writer for MLB.com — the Web presence of Major League baseball — thought his forthcoming book, Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher (Lyons Press), was a sure best-seller. But when the intrigue began to unfold, Mayo confessed to experiencing some “oy vey” moments.

“I had several, yes. Probably a couple of nights of lost sleep,” he told NJ Jewish News in a phone interview from Port St. Lucie, Fla., the spring training home of the New York Mets.

“There had been whispers about the possibility of Roger Clemens’ use of performance-enhancing drugs for some time,” he said, “but it didn’t even cross my mind when I was writing the book.”

Mayo, who grew up in Verona and attended Temple Sholom of West Essex in Cedar Grove, said he spent “a couple of days freaking out and trying to figure out what this means. I’m watching the congressional hearings — and I think both of them are lying,” referring to Clemens and Brian McNamee, the personal trainer who claims to have provided Clemens and other players with the illegal substances.

The writer’s emotions ran “back and forth.” On the one hand, Clemens was a hot topic, which might boost sales. On the other hand, the book — written several months earlier — made no mention of recent events, perhaps rendering it out of date and out of touch. “Eventually I calmed down and accepted that it was going to be what it was going to be,” Mayo said.

“In the end, for the most part, from the sales perspective, I think it will be helpful. There will be people who will be intrigued, [but] maybe they will walk away disappointed because there’s nothing about the Mitchell Report in there.

“The one thing I’ve been maintaining: As much as the book is about Roger Clemens, it’s also about the hitters that I talked to and how difficult it was to hit him, and that challenge doesn’t change even if your opinion of the pitcher has changed.”

Facing Clemens contains interviews with 13 major and minor league batters who have had the opportunity to step up to the plate against “The Rocket,” including Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr., and Clemens’ son Koby, who took a turn against his dad in a minor league game.

What would these athletes say now? Do they accept that they were beaten by a Hall of Fame pitcher or do they say, “Wait a minute; he was cheating. He had an advantage”? Mayo has not been in contact with the players in his book. A lot of them are reluctant to make comments because anything they say can end up as a headline on the sports-pages, he said.

Mayo believes some of them would take a philosophical approach: Clemens wasn’t the only pitcher who availed himself of pharmaceutical assistance. There’s still going to be a certain amount of respect for the work he put in, Mayo said, “because even if you thought he was shooting up with stuff all the time, he still had to develop new pitches, to evolve as a pitcher over time regardless of how he kept himself on the field. He still had to learn how to be several different pitchers over the course of his career, and that I think is still impressive.”

On the other hand, “I’m sure there will be a certain lack or loss of respect from some the guys I talked to,” Mayo said.

Mayo’s primary beat for MLB.com is the minor leagues, which he said, have stronger drug and disciplining policies for those who test positive for banned substances. “The minors have always been a little bit ahead of the big leagues in terms of that stuff,” he said. “A lot of that has to do with the need for the [major league] players’ association involvement in protecting its members.”

Common opinion, including Mayo’s, indicated that Clemens was a lock for Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but his alleged drug problem “obviously tarnishes his image, and there’s all sorts of questions about his integrity. But if you’re just basing it on his accomplishments on the field, regardless of what you think about him, he’s still one of the better pitchers we’ve ever seen.”

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