Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay were, very, very briefly, teammates. Clemens won the Cy Young with the 1998 Blue Jays as Halladay made his first two starts in the bigs. I would assume that, given Halladay’s fleeting presence on the Jays’ roster that year, they didn’t become good friends or anything. On the off chance they did, however, consider that friendship over.
Early yesterday morning, Roy Halladay took to Twitter and offered his view that Clemens and Barry Bonds should not be in the Hall of Fame:
When you use PEDs you admit your not good enough to compete fairly! Our nations past time should have higher standards! No Clemens no Bonds!
— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) January 6, 2016
This got a lot of play throughout the day yesterday, with most people praising Halladay for his unvarnished opinion on the matter of performance-enhancing drugs.
Last night, after the Hall of Fame results came back, Mark Berman, the sports director of Fox26 in Houston passed along Clemens’ statement in response to his falling short of induction once again. A statement in which Clemens took a swipe right back at Halladay:
.@rogerclemens gets 45.2% of votes for HOF,up from 37.5last year.The 7time CyYoung winner issued following statement pic.twitter.com/qclbFxRcYW
— Mark Berman (@MarkBerman_) January 7, 2016
It’s rather surprising that Clemens directly responded to a critic like this as his going after critics strategy proved disastrous for him a few years back. It’s especially surprising that Clemens makes this accusation of Halladay given that, as far as I can find and as far as I can remember, Halladay has never been accused of being a PED user, amphetamines or otherwise.
Which, to be sure, is also the case with lots of players who have used amphetamines -- they are said to have been ubiquitous in clubhouses until very recently and no one has really focused very hard on the history of that -- but it is still eyebrow raising to see Clemens make this accusation at a former player. It’s especially eyebrow raising that he’s using “the strength coach” -- almost certainly Brian McNamee -- as his source, what with Clemens spending the past several years in litigation claiming that McNamee is a big fat liar. Any weapon at hand, I suppose.
Oh well. Passions run hot at Hall of Fame time. Go back to sleep you two retired men. We’ll wake you up this time next year and you can swipe at each other again.
