As if baseball didn’t have enough problems Curt Schilling has decided to weigh in on the Mitchell Report. Schiling, the never-shy pitcher for the Red Sox opined that Roger Clemens should either clear his name or give up his four Cy Young awards won after 1997.
"If he doesn't do that then there aren't many options as a fan for me other than to believe his career 192 wins and three Cy Youngs he won prior to 1997 were the end. From that point on the numbers were attained through using [performance-enhancing drugs]. Just like I stated about Jose [Canseco], if that is the case with Roger, the four Cy Youngs should go to the rightful winners, and the numbers should go away if he cannot refute the accusations."
Schilling’s solution has a number of problems, the biggest being who were the “rightful winners” and how can you be sure they were clean when they “should” have won?
Furthermore, Schilling is hardly in a position to question anyone. He went before Congress in 2005 and told them that he had “grossly overstated” the steroid problem in baseball and vowed that if there were loopholes in the testing procedures baseball would close them. He could have helped the Mitchell Report by talking to Senator Mitchell, but he like every other active player with the exception of Frank Thomas, did not choose to do so.
So, perhaps it would be best for Curt to keep his opinions to himself. He had a chance to help clean the game up and didn't take it. He did however reach a conclusion that all of us can agree with when he said in his post, “the sport needs fixing.”
Photo of Roger Clemens in an October press conference by AP/Julie Jacobson
