Joe Posanski on Roger Clemens' self-denial

here.

I haven't trusted him since he got the biggest contract in baseball, and proceeded to show up fat for spring training and just go 40-39 over 4 seasons with the Red Sox.

UPDATE: Jeff Miron says:

All that aside, the prosecution of Clemens and other athletes for using performance-enhancing drugs is a waste of government resources.

Professional athletes do incredibly damaging things to their bodies every time they play or practice. If they want to use performance-enhancing substances, that should be between them and their employers.

Photo link here.

Quotes of the day

I assumed Bruins fans and Canucks fans would be bonded by their histories of heartbreak (a little like the Cardinals and Red Sox in 2004, actually). That hasn't happened. And it hasn't happened because the Canucks revealed themselves to be flopping wusses who (a) bite the fingers of opposing players, (b) use a 15th-string defenseman to knock the other team's best forward unconscious when he's not looking, then dedicate the next game to that defenseman as if nothing ever happened, and (c) don't back any of this crap up. If this were a movie, the Bruins would be Will Hunting and the Canucks would be the condescending ponytailed guy from Harvard who won't go outside.  For a city weaned on the Big Bad Bruins of the 1970s, Vancouver's flopping/biting routine went over about as well as a Roger Clemens statue.--Bill Simmons

You mean they were Russians? We thought they were Americans. Of course you can have them.--The Taliban

If election were held today, I think Obama would win the WH, we'd lose the Senate, and win back the House.--Howard Dean

I'd bet a lot of dough that Dean will be correct on at least one of those 3 predictions.--Cav

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.--Mark Twain

Illinois gained nationwide notoriety in January when Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a 67% hike in the personal income tax rate while lifting the corporate tax rate to 9.5%, the fourth highest in the nation. How is that working out? The good news is that corporate tax receipts in Springfield are up by about $300 million amid the economic recovery—though the state comptroller's office announced in April that the state still faces $8 billion in unpaid bills. The bad news is that, according to the state's Department of Commerce, Illinois has already shelled out some $230 million in corporate subsidies to keep more than two dozen companies from fleeing the state. And more are on the way.--WSJ Editorial Board

In our view, markets will find a way to load risk on to any government guarantor. Eventually, regulatory controls get gamed. The regulatory mechanism steers financial firms toward a common risk factor. When failure comes, it is catastrophic. ... I have been saying for quite some time that the goal of government should be to aim for a financial system that is easier to fix rather than one that is harder to break. I also believe that a large financial sector that provides a lot of "safe" assets (safe only because of a government guarantee) is not obviously better than a financial sector that is only as large as it can be using the tools of diversification and skill at managing risk.--Arnold Kling

The Liberal government under former prime minister Jean Chrétien and finance minister Paul Martin began a concerted effort to balance the budget in 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, the government cut spending by a whopping 14%. As the report’s authors note, “if the U.S. government were to cut real spending by 14% over the next three years, the budget in FY [fiscal year] 2013 would be US$473-billion (in 2010 dollars) less than the FY 2010 budget.” Most importantly, the Chrétien-era Liberals were able to balance the budget, “not with large tax increases, but with substantial cuts in government spending.” Federal spending as a percentage of GDP went from 18% in 1993 to 13% in 2009. And the Canadian economy prospered because of it. During this period, the unemployment rate fell from a high of 11.4% in 1993 to 6% in 2007, according to Statistics Canada. Moreover, as the government cut spending, more resources were freed up for the private sector. As a result, Canada experienced high growth rates of 4-5% between 1997 and 2000.--Jesse Kline

Photo links here and here.

Top 10 Reasons this Red Sox fan LIKES THE YANKEES

10. Javier Vazquez sucked, and the Yanks saved the Sox from getting him.

9. Like the ugly rock singer or awkward nerd who gets the girl, the 2004 season undid a lot of self-doubt. Without coming back from 0-3 against the prom king in the ALCS (let's call him Biff, in a tip to Back To The Future), it would not have been nearly as sweet.

8. El Duque sucked, and the Yanks saved the Sox from getting him.

7. George Steinbrenner's sunglasses remind me of Elton John's flaming accessories (based on an idea from my good friend Todd).

6. ARod, Jeter and Bucky Dent are as pretty as Gisele, Brady, and Bridget. DISCLAIMER: I'm getting old, so my standards are slipping.

5. Chen Ming Wang's pitching is scrubbing William Hung's singing off the D-List. Too bad my good friend Fazz throws all these chinese surnames around as if they were euphemisms for private parts. He and FDR would have gotten along great.

4. ARod doesn't suck, but he's overpaid, and the Yanks saved the Sox from getting him.

3. Because of the ARod signing, the Yanks missed out on Schilling. Swap those two, and 2004 ends differently.

2. Roger Clemens totally sucks, and the Yanks saved the Sox from getting him in his geriatric phase. (OK, he was one of the best ever to play the sport, like ...)

1. Mariano Rivera is one of the best ever to play the sport. To play any sport. Any Sox fan who wouldn't have wanted him in a Boston uniform doesn't know the game or a good man.

This zero revenue blog has greater journalistic standards than WNBC

The Smoking Gun:

Shortly after ESPN broke the news yesterday that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte would be nailed in the Mitchell Report, WNBC-TV, the NBC affiliate in New York, blew the story wide open. "Newschannel 4's Jonathan Dienst has obtained the expected list of current and former major league players linked to steroids, according to George Mitchell's investigation," reported the station's web site at 11:23 AM. The WNBC story then unspooled a list of 75 purported juicers, including Albert Pujols, Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek, Nomar Garciaparra, Ivan Rodriguez, Jeff Bagwell, Milton Bradley, Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Trot Nixon, Mike Cameron, Brady Anderson, Albert Belle, Kyle Farnsworth, and Wally Joyner. The WNBC exclusive, which is reprinted below, was posted seven minutes after an identical list of names was published by the sports blog Deadspin, which reported that it had been forwarded the names by "about 25 different people" during the preceding hour. The list, which was whipping around via e-mail, "could very likely be one of those Web urban legends that somehow got around," Deadspin cautioned. WNBC, though, showed no such reserve. The station reported that it had received the list from "two separate sources" (which was still 23 "sources" fewer than Deadspin). But after WNBC posted the list, baseball officials began refuting the story, with the station reporting that Major League Baseball brass said there were "several discrepancies between the list posted and Mitchell's list." As it turned out, it was several dozen "discrepancies," with nearly half the names in WNBC's story not appearing in Mitchell's report. In fact, every name above--from Pujols to Joyner--can not be found in the Mitchell Report.

Smoking Gun has a reprint of the WNBC post.

My 2:03pm EST post is here, although I only had about 15 of the names at that time, and updated the post as I blitzed through the report.

I think may have one-upped the Smoking Gun, too; Wally Joyner is actually listed on the Mitchell Report, page 73.

UPDATE: Let's add Deadspin to the list of one-upped by Cav.

One of my brokers just broke this rumor about Roger Clemens

He's named on the Mitchell Report for taking steroids.

I'm one of the Bosox fans who has no love for the Rocket. The highest paid pitcher in the league should not go 40-39 from 1993-96, show up overweight in spring training regularly, and then flip off his team and fans.

If he's out of the Hall of Fame, I won't be crying.

Why statistics will not help Roger Clemens

The story is here.

Quotes of the day

"It's not a bailout, its a loan." (Not if you never pay it back it isn't. And if all you need is a loan, issue more debt. Oh, wait, no one will lend to you? Right. That's why we call it a "bail out.")--Equity Private

... the bailout's end result may be towering tax rates, drastic spending cuts or serious inflation -- or all three.--Holman Jenkins

There is no doubt that private miscalculation and imprudence made matters worse for more than a few lending institutions and individual borrowers. (One can’t explain an unusual cluster of errors by citing greed, which is always around, just as one can’t explain a cluster of airplane crashes by citing gravity. Anyway, the greedy aim at profits, not losses.)--Lawrence White

We can only hope that news of the FDIC program doesn't encourage more people to stop paying their mortgages as they await rescue from Sheila Bair.--WSJ Editorial Board

The administrative cost of loan modifications is much higher than the cost of just paying these people's moving expenses and holding the door for them so that it does not hit them on the way out. There probably is a worse idea for dealing with the crisis than loan modification, but right now I cannot think of one.--Arnold Kling

Left to its own devices, no economy ever behaves in such a self-destructive manner. The root of the problem lies in Washington with a political class that long ago recognized the power of the engine and used that power to further their own ambitions. The question we now face is whether those same men and women can recognize the damage they have done and right it.--Tom Lindmark

The standard procedure for most members of Congress is to ignore everything public choice economists teach us about the incentives of bureaucrats, give the bureaucrats enormous power, and then complain when they use that power badly, fail to achieve their goals, create other problems, and transfer wealth to their political allies.--David Henderson

This year will be remembered not just for one of the worst financial crises in American history, but also as the moment when economists abandoned their principles. There used to be a consensus that selective intervention in the economy was bad. In the last 12 months this belief has been shattered.--OLIVER HART and LUIGI ZINGALES

Forget that a murderer does not stop for stop signs and would not obey a gun law either. Forget that it leaves the victim unarmed, but leaves the victimizer free to operate. Forget that it makes self-protection a crime, but leaves the criminal better off than he was before. Forget that an assassin can make a gun or steal a gun or even use another type of weapon. Forget all that.--Lanny Friedlander

Sometimes the kindest, best, most useful six words one man can say to another, whether brother, father, friend or whatever are:

She's crazy, get rid of her.--Tom Smith

The bottom line is that the Red Sox have paid less (on an annual average basis) for Pedroia than the Yankees paid for Cano, and we’re willing to bet that all 30 major league teams would choose the former over the latter if they had their druthers today.--Tony Massarotti

Years ago, when players like Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn departed, the Red Sox were left looking like the bad guys. ... Now Ramirez gets shipped off and he is the one with the damaged reputation.--Tony Massarotti

After all, it wasn't too long ago that a teacher said she had given my daughter a low grade in her first quarter of work in the sixth grade to encourage her to work harder. "If I gave her an A, she wouldn't be motivated to work harder, would she?" the teacher asked me, when I questioned the methodology behind her grading policy.--Jo McIntyre

Did you know: That Bert Blyleven has more shutouts than

– Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez. Combined.
– Roger Clemens and Chris Carpenter. Combined.
– Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Mark Buehrle. Combined.
– Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina and Brandon Webb. Combined.
– Orel Hershiser, Curt Schilling, Johan Santana and Bartolo Colon. Combined.
– Dave Stieb and Jack Morris. Combined.
– The New York Yankees pitchers have had since 1988. Combined.
– The entire American League in 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and … every year going back to 1992.

He also has more shutouts than every single pitcher of his era except Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, Hall of Famers who each have exactly ONE more shutout than Bert Blyleven.

No, Joe, I didn't know until now.

Alleged MLB steroid users from the Mitchell Report

Complete report here (300 pages). 85 players named. (This was hastily assembled, as it's a busy day in the markets for me; corrections appreciated).

Chad Allen
Manny Alexander
Mike Bell
Gary Bennett, Jr
Marvin Bernard
Larry Bigbie
Barry Bonds
Kevin Brown
Alex Cabrera
Ken Caminiti
Mark Carreon
Jose Canseco
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Lenny Dykstra
Bobby Estalella
Matt Franco
Ryan Franklin
Eric Gagne
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Juan Gonzalez
Matt Herges
Phil Hiatt
Glenallen Hill
Todd Hundley
Wally Joyner
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul Lo Duca
Exavier Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Mark McGwire
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Daniel Naulty
Denny Neagle
Rafael Palmiero
Jim Parque
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Armondo Rios
Brian Roberts
F.P. Santangelo
Benito Santiago
David Segui
Sammy Sosa
Gary Sheffield
Mike Stanton
Miguel Tejada
Mo Vaughn
Randy Velarde
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Todd Williams
Kevin Young
Greg Zaun

Internet Purchasers
Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Paul Byrd
Jose Canseco
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Jason Grimsley
Jose Guillen
Jerry Hairston, Jr
Darren Homes
Gary Matthews, Jr
John Rocker
Scott Schoeneweis
Ismael Valdez
Matt Williams
Steve Woodard

The most surreal thing I read today

is by Dan Shaughnessy, interviewing Bill Parcells, on his time with Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin:

"They're serious-minded guys," says Bill Parcells, the man who brought Belichick and Coughlin together with the Giants from 1988-90. "But both of them have a good sense of humor. You don't always see it, but I've had quite a few laughs with both of 'em."

"Bill and Tom have different personalities. Bill would be a little more reserved. His demeanor is much more laid-back. I would say you would have a lot harder time figuring out what Bill was thinking than what Tom was thinking. These guys are both serious-minded fellas. They're both serious about their job. They both really have a lot of passion for football.

"They both came up paying their dues. Bill was holding cards for [Baltimore Colts coach] Ted Marchibroda, driving him around when he was young, and Tom was lining the fields at Rochester Institute of Technology. He started the program up there, so both of them came up kind of the way I came up. I was at Hastings College doing the wash after practice. I think all of us that came up that way, usually you have a greater appreciation for what the game is about.

"What Bill has done there in New England is remarkable. There's no other word for it. And I was just happy to see Tom win because he'd been taking a bunch of crap here in New York. They're just not going to be able to say anything now."

Belichick, a Parcells protégé for more than a decade, was New York's defensive coordinator in the three seasons that Coughlin worked with the Giants' wide receivers.

Parcells dismisses the notion that one must be a "players' coach" to succeed in 2008.

"I never have agreed with that," he says. "I think players are interested in people that can help them perform. I think you just have to be yourself and I think both of these guys are themselves and I think it comes across. Their teams reflect what they are, and that's a sign of good coaching."

Parcells never let his assistants talk to the media.

"That's just the way it was," he says. "They have rules now where the assistants have to be available. I know the media kind of resents the fact that they can't talk to everyone in the organization from time to time, but if you really think about it - can you imagine the editor of The Boston Globe letting all of his guys talk about policy and why they're doing what they're doing? If you really think about it, it's not that outlandish a policy. I was an assistant for three years [1980 in New England under Erhardt, and '81 and '82 with the Giants under Ray Perkins]. We didn't talk to the media. We tried to stay as far off the radar as we could."

Belichick and Coughlin must not have watched Parcells's press briefings. Much more fun in front of the mikes, the Tuna has no opinion on the podium comportment of his protégés.

"I see two guys that are serious about their team and they're trying to complete their obligatory responsibilities with the media," says Parcells. "They really are, and I don't mean that in a negative way."

What about Belichick's astonishing ability to remain obtuse about the most benign of topics?

"That's the way he does things," says Parcells. "I certainly wouldn't pass judgment on any of that. Whatever the hell he's doing, somebody else ought to copy it, because he's doing pretty good.

"You want to see the people that you know well be successful. And you're happy when that happens.

"I think I'm at the age where I enjoy that more than I used to."

I'm not a big fan of Shaughnessy nor Parcells, but do greatly appreciate Belichick. And I recently posted about how I was the biggest believer of the Giants in NYC, at least from August to December. And the guys in the Tradesports pit can vouch for that belief.

But I've regained a little respect for Curly Haired Boyfriend and Coach Slim Fast today. That was a good interview.

UPDATE: Osi Umenyora is not getting any respect from me right now. He could end up as the Roger Clemens of football if he keeps this up.