Roger Clemens vs. Alex Rodriguez: How A-Rod Did Steroids Right

If you must do steroids in baseball—if you must break the law, if you must cheat, if you must have so little respect for both your own body and the game of baseball that you’ll willingly defile both—there’s a right and a wrong way to do it.

Alex Rodriguez did steroids right. Manny Ramirez did steroids right, too. Roger Clemens did them wrong.

(Take a second now to send me an inflammatory email, or to explode with fury in the comments. I don’t endorse the use of illegal substances, nor do I think cheating is cool. But let’s be honest about Clemens—dude’s making it worse).

In case you missed it, the latest episode in the Roger Clemens mini-series is that Clemens is now under federal indictment. It’s not for taking steroids; rather, it’s for lying about taking steroids before a Congressional committee in 2008.

It’s a self-inflicted situation. Given the opportunity, Clemens insisted on testifying before Congress—it was entirely voluntary—when the committee would have been happy to skip the hearing and instead file a report based on their depositions. Clemens, I’m sure, counted on the same tools that had treated him so well all his life: glad-handing, back-slapping, and signing autographs. He did all of those things with members of Congress in a mini-roadshow tour of congressional offices before the hearing.

But somehow, the Good Ol’ Boys club didn’t bail him out on this one. The testimony of his teammate Andy Pettitte provided the necessary material for the committee to indict Clemens for perjury.

Now, let’s back up. Baseball players don’t get into a lot of trouble for taking steroids, especially if it was in the past (as we’ll see when we take a closer look at A-Rod and Manny’s situations). But if Clemens gets convicted—which it looks very likely that he will—he will get in real trouble. Big-boy trouble.

It’s technically possible for Clemens to go to prison for 30 years, as he’s been charged on six counts with each one carrying a maximum sentence of five years’ incarceration. Rob Becker, legal analyst for Fox Sports, breaks it down in fantastic detail, pointing out that even if Clemens gets the minimum sentence for only one of those counts, and gets out early for good behavior, he’ll still be behind bars for more than a year.

Can I emphasize this enough? Real jail. Not for taking steroids—just for how he reacted to the accusation that he had.

Alex Rodriguez’s story couldn’t be more different. It was big news when his name was leaked as one of the 104 players that tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2003. There was no penalty for failing that test—in fact, the players’ union agreed to the testing only under condition of anonymity, and the purpose of it was solely to determine if regular drug testing needed to be mandated.

So he fessed up. For a day or two the front page of ESPN.com was dedicated to an awkward video of A-Rod shedding giant anabolic tears and admitting to using steroids for three years while with the Texas Rangers.

The consequence? Well, nothing really. It must have been clear by that point that MLB was not going to be able to put asterisks next to every player that used the substances, and that the steroids era of baseball was just going to become something that you factored into history (like, say, the portion of NBA history before they instituted the three-point line, or when they played fewer games per season in the NFL). The law wasn’t going to come after him, and neither was MLB. Confessing was not only the right thing to do, but it appeared from his emotional confession that it also cleared a great deal of pent-up guilt.

Now the only lasting legacy of A-Rod’s steroid use is that when he breaks records—like 600 home runs, recently—we remember for a day or so that some of it was tainted. Then we move on.

One more story, for the sake of comparison: that of Manny Ramirez.

Of the three, Manny was the only one that got caught while he was actively using steroids, and while consequences for doing so were in place. It was 2009, and by virtue of testing positive for hCG, which is often used at the end of a steroid cycle, he was suspended for 50 games.

What was interesting about Manny’s approach, though, was that he didn’t say anything. He didn’t fess up, and he didn’t deny it. For Manny it was a business transaction: the cost of using steroids was to sit out 50 games, and it was an exchange he was willing to make.

It’s easily construed by his lack of denial that Manny Ramirez was just as guilty as Clemens and A-Rod, and that he knew it. But as long as he served the suspension, MLB was willing to wipe the slate clean again. Was it wrong for him to do it? Of course; it was against the rules. But perhaps the consequence isn’t severe enough if a player can absorb it and still feel that the exchange came out in his favor.

There are plenty of other examples we could have drawn from, as well. If I had more space we could take a look at Mark McGwire’s “I’m not here to talk about the past” mantra before Congress, and how that may have saved him from meeting the same fate as Clemens.

Steroids have obviously been a pox on baseball, and those who use them to gain advantages need to pay the price.

It’s just up to them if they want to make it even worse.