Their names should be forever linked. Bonds and Clemens. Baseball's Bonnie and Clyde. Barnstorming American cities, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens robbed fans, plundered our pastime and cheated their fellow ballplayers, both past and present.
In time, I suspect, they'll be judged as equals. But right now, fresh off the Mitchell Report and its juicy details of steroids and syringes and Clemens' buttocks, the rocket reaction has not come close to approaching the anger and fury we've collectively flung at Bonds the past four years.
Unlike the slugger, the pitcher is being afforded the benefit of the doubt by many, and there's no reasonable explanation for the discrepancy. True, they enjoyed different types of relationships with the media - Clemens authored the foreword of a book by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci - and true, they have different personalities. But are their crimes against the game different enough to warrant such inconsistent reactions, to immediately cast Bonds as a criminal and Clemens as merely a suspect?
While there are certainly many commentators and columnists these past few days willing to challenge Clemens' career, there are others who have shown a reluctance to accept Mitchell's evidence as truth. Even Jose Canseco, who seems to take a perverse pleasure in the ongoing controversy, told Dan Patrick, "With Roger, it's a tossup."
And Bob Costas, among the most reliable moral compasses a sports fan could ask for, was careful with his words, speaking Friday on ESPN Radio: "Everybody wants to make pat, easy conclusions," he said. "I am not defending Roger Clemens here, but I will say this: Everyone wants to equate Roger Clemens with Barry Bonds, and it's very tempting to do. Clemens is arguably the greatest pitcher of the modern era, and Bonds is clearly the greatest player of the modern era. ... You want to draw parallels between them, but at this point, there is much less evidence against Roger Clemens than there is [against] Barry Bonds."
Really? Is there?
Look, no one's taken the time to write the book on Clemens, so if you pile it all on a table, the case against Bonds might reach the ceiling. That said, the case against Clemens weighs the same. The evidence laid out in pages 167-175 of the Mitchell Report is as damning as anything I've read about Bonds since the BALCO scandal erupted in 2003.
