What Roger Clemens Means to Me

Today, Roger Clemens’ perjury trial was declared a mistrial, due to some evidence added by the prosecution that was already deemed inadmissible. Apparently. That’s what Craig Calcaterra tells me and I trust him. I know basically nothing about courtroom stuff, besides what I learned at Boys State and a fake trial in Social Studies class in 9th grade*. But I do know I have some thoughts about Roger Clemens.

*I was the judge and I don’t remember what the case was about or what the verdict was, but I do remember not allowing a “police officer” to testify about blood spatter because he wasn’t an expert. I’m all about taking advantage of any power I am given.

I grew up in a family of six (now seven) people, none of whom cared one iota about sports. In fact, the closest my family got to sports was when my sister played volleyball in middle school. We didn’t have a television and we didn’t play them as a family. However, there was an old man who lived down the street from us named Tommy Thompson (not the former governor of Wisconsin) who for whatever reason decided to give his entire collection of baseball cards to me and my brothers. Neither of my brothers cared for them as much as I did, though. I would sort and resort the cards, first by player name, then by team, then by year and I would read the back of them. I was astonished at even the thought of placing them in my bike spokes, for fear of ruining them beyond repair. Bret Saberhagen and Tom Brunansky were among my favorites, simply because they kept showing up in the decks.

For many years, baseball cards were my only knowledge of baseball at all, apart from listening to Brewers games on the radio. In fact, when I read “The Red Sox Brunansky” on the back of one of the cards, I literally thought, “Oh, does every team have a player named Tom Brunansky?” Maybe that was a function of my naivety in general and not simply of baseball. In Wisconsin, police officers would hand out decks of Brewers baseball cards, in an effort to create a positive public image. Every summer, I would run up (carefully) to the first one I saw and ask him (politely) for a pack. Since no one else in my family wanted to play sports, I would take a tennis ball and throw it at a basketball backboard in order to play catch with myself. It probably looked ridiculously silly, but I’m pretty good at catching now, at least.  The only time I actually played baseball was in a youth softball summer league, which remains as some of my favorite memories from childhood.

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