Fear and Loathing in the Congressional Oversight Committee

There's been saturation coverage of the hearings all day, so I'll just summarize my reaction here real quick:

1. I believe Roger Clemens took steroids.

2. That said, good luck convicting him of perjury if your main witness for the prosecution is Brian McNamee.

3. By forcing the issue this far, Clemens put Andy Pettitte in a really terrible position. Which, to be honest, lowers my opinion of Clemens more than any amount of steroid use.

But hey, at least he's not a vegan.

4. Our elected representative are asses. Why on earth did even this spectacle have to split down party lines? We have a thrilling three-way bipartisan tie for the most staggeringly stupid thing said by a member of Congress today:

*Representative Clay, Democrat of Maryland, asking on behalf of a friend what hat Clemens would wear into the Hall of Fame. Points for ballsiness! Negative points for wild inappropriateness.

*Rep. David (R, VA) comparing the attacks on Clemens to "a lynching." No. No, no, no.

*Rep. Souder (R, IN) comparing the players' widespread silence on the steroid issue to the anti-snitching culture in Baltimore that got one family's house fatally firebombed recently. Again: no.

Nobody has died, people! Although I'm starting to consider it. I'm sick, it's raining, I'm stressed out, and I just watched the U.S. Government discuss abscesses and buttocks for a solid hour. Not even kitlers can cheer me up today.

I'll leave you with this quote, though, from the autobiography of the great Bill Veeck:

“Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that baseball is not a great game. It has to be a great game to have survived what we have done to it.”

Amen.

Spoke Too Soon...

Well, looks like a lifetime of sports fandom has taught me nothing: I jinxed myself. Yes, my first-ever conversation with the Village Voice's brand new editor was my last, as it looks like they'll be ditching the sports section -- or, at least, me.

So "Out of Left Field" lived fast, died young, and left a decent-looking corpse. But I'm bringing Eephus Pitch back from the dead. It will rise from the ashes like a phoenix... a New York baseball-obsessed phoenix. I promise my metaphors will be better in the morning.

I'm still recovering from an epic night of drowning my sorrows, so I'll be back for real tomorrow. But in the meantime I'll leave you with some applicable sports cliches that occurred to me last night, somewhere between the wine and the shots of Jameson (not my idea):

• "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

• "I've just got to stay within myself." Never was entirely sure what that one meant, but if it's good enough for Bernie, it's good enough for me.

• "It is what it is." Isn't it? This is the sports phrase of the year. Five words that fit any occasion!

As you can imagine, there are a lot of other things I'd like to say about the situation at the Voice. But for now, I guess discretion is the better part of valor. I'll save it for the nice men in white coats when they visit my cozy padded cell.

Meanwhile, Oliver Perez is having another very good start for the Mets, allowing (as of this writing) no runs on two hits through three. The Yankees are off tonight, and so am I.