Between The Lines

Everyone is trying to read between the lines these days.

They are already analyzing the excerpts of Roger Clemens’s interview on 60 Minutes that will be broadcast on Sunday. And for weeks they have been trying to decode statements and uncover the strategies of the attorneys for Clemens and his accuser, Brian McNamee.

But there’s no evidence between the lines so one man’s word against another is how this will be decided.

There are some who believe Clemens and some who don’t.

There’s not much chance of changing anyone’s opinion because most were formed long before McNamee named Clemens in George Mitchell’s report on steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Those opinions may have grown from the erroneous story that the Los Angeles Times published last year or from the shattered bat he once threw in Mike Piazza’s direction or maybe it’s just because Clemens wore a baseball uniform that someone didn’t like.

That’s why justice never stands a chance in the court of public opinion.

But why should we expect justice in a country that can’t even provide people with decent housing or healthcare or nutrition or education? And fairness seems too much to ask from a society that brands human beings as illegal and allows racial profiling and torture and secret prisons and capital punishment.

Roger Clemens – the greatest pitcher of his generation and probably the greatest of any generation – is caught in the same type of unjust system that grinds up the poor every day.

That irony is about the only thing you can pull from between the lines.