The Price of Admission

Andy Pettitte vs. Roger Clemens.  Here’s a fight I never thought would happen.  Until recently both these guys represented pretty much the same thing to me: fiery competitors who anchored several Yankee pitching staffs together.  But as Andy Pettitte’s deposition date Monday approaches, a couple of AP sportswriters suggest Pettitte’s account of how he came to use Human Growth Hormone in 2002 may in turn implicate Roger Clemens.

Clemens has been at the center of a firestorm of accusation and speculation since the Mitchell Report first emerged in December.  He is by far the most prominent player accused of using performance enhancing drugs in this round of investigation.  Clemens has sought to clear his name through a bizarre series of stunts that includes an interview on 60 Minutes and the production of a secretly-taped phone conversation between him and, until now, his only official accuser, Brian McNamee.  None of this has quieted his critics.

Pettitte, on the other hand, has admitted to malfeasance.  He acknowledged his past use of HGH, in part confirming McNamee’s account, and has agreed to testify about it before the House committee investigating this mess.  Now the speculation has turned to what Pettitte might say about his former teammate and the role Clemens may have played in Pettitte’s dalliance with chemical supplementation.

If we’ve learned one thing over the years of these painful and painfully slow investigations into the integrity of baseball, it’s that players will never turn on each other.  They are phenomenally gifted and tremendously hard-working, but they are also the world’s richest frat brothers.  And you have to protect your brothers.

When it comes time for Pettitte to bare his soul, expect gaps to appear in his memory or certain facts or events to have faded with time.  He’ll know what he did, but he won’t be too sure exactly where everyone else fits in.

Even if he weren’t put in a position to protect his long-time friend he’d still be under intense pressure to forget.  Pettitte has signed a deal to pitch for the Yankees again this year, and no one wants a snitch as a teammate.

I hope I’m wrong about this.  I hope Pettitte doesn’t have to rely on an unreliable memory to get through his testimony tomorrow.  But whether he does not or not we should thank him for advancing this dialogue about performance enhancing drugs in baseball.

Tags: Andy Pettitte, baseball, Brian McNamee, HGH, Mitchell Report, performance enhancing drugs, Roger Clemens