The steroids thing keeps reaching new witchhunt levels:
The New York offices received at least a dozen calls from reporters Thursday concerning rumored positive tests for Houston Astro pitcher Roger Clemens and Boston Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon. The officials spent much of the day denying those rumors.
“They want to come after the stars to see people react,” Damon said of the reports Thursday, before the Red Sox played the Angels. “But I haven’t heard anything. Once your name is thrown out there, people start assuming. … Unbelievable.”
Said Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein: “I wouldn’t even want to honor that by commenting. The reporting of the steroid issue has taken on witch-hunt proportions, and it’s wrong. That’s a severe accusation, whether it’s in an Internet chat room or a newspaper, you would like to think there is some actual reporting going on.” (Los Angeles Times)
I really like Theo Epstein’s quote: of course, the truth either way will hopefully come out, but now it seems people just fling accusations of steroid use on basically anyone who plays well in any season late in his career. Personally I think Clemens’ numbers show that he has actually played much worse in his last few years than at the beginning of his career, pretty much as predicted, and his Houston excellence could just be one of those freak last hurrahs, aided by a transition to the National League. (Clemens’ ERA+ from 1999: 97, 137, 128, 101, 112, 145. Career ERA+: 141. So for his entire time in New York has was pretty much an average #2/#3 kind of pitcher.)
I believe some people did steroids. Perhaps even those being named did. But I also believe the prevalence of belief in urban rumours (despite the best efforts of Snopes) and conspiracy theories shows that people in general overly discount the probabilities of flukes and coincidences occurring because people like to believe in direct cause and effect, and I believe that’s enough for me to withhold judgement till more concrete evidence - even circumstantial evidence - appears.