As the Rocket turns

We have now officially reached the point at which I feel dirty for ever having paid any attention to the circus that is Roger Clemens and his Mitchell Report saga.

On a day when his attorney disputed allegations Roger Clemens had a lengthy affair with country music singer Mindy McCready, McCready offered no such denial.

"I cannot refute anything in the story," McCready told the New York Daily News on Monday from her home in Nashville, Tenn.

The newspaper described her as "tearful but resolute."

Rusty Hardin, who is representing Clemens in an ongoing steroid investigation as well as a defamation suit against the man who accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs, said Clemens' relationship with the troubled McCready was friendly but never romantic.

"Mindy McCready is a longtime family friend of Roger Clemens and the Clemens family," Hardin said in a prepared statement. "At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her."

You can read on or Google around if you want to know the more sordid aspects of this, which if true ought to land Clemens in much hotter water than what he's in now. I'm not making any judgment about their veracity - indeed, I'm contemplating whether Clorox or Mr. Clean will do a better job of wiping all knowledge of this soap opera out of my brain - just noting that somewhere along the line, this stopped being about steroids and started being about something else. I will say two things before I check myself in for a lobotomy:

1. Being a known sleazeball didn't prevent Wade Boggs from being elected to the Hall of Fame. On the other hand, Margo Adams wasn't jailbait (admittedly, neither was McCready at the time when the relationship was alleged to have become intimate), and the sportwriters had more than a decade to forget about all that before Boggs appeared on a ballot. Still, something to keep in mind when some upright member of the BBWAA brings this up in 2012 or whenever.

2. I know I'm not the only person to say this, but you think maybe Clemens might have served himself better by making a tearful admission and plea for forgiveness, followed by a quiet settlement with Brian McNamee? Where's a reset button when you really need one?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 29, 2008 to Baseball