As if this whole Roger Clemens-Mitchell Report fiasco couldn’t get any weirder, it’s being reported in the NY Daily News this morning that not only was Clemens cheating on his wife for ten years starting in the early 1990s, he was actually carrying on the affair with singer Mindy McCready… beginning when she was 15 years old.

This is going to get downright awkward.

Of course, for his part, Clemens is denying that the relationship between he and McCready was ever sexual. His lawyer, Rusty Hardin, has said:

“(Clemens) flatly denies having had any kind of an inappropriate relationship with her… He’s considered her a close family friend… He has never had a sexual relationship with her.”

Right. It’s totally normal for a (then) 28-year old man to start hanging out with a fifteen year-old girl. Like it was totally normal when Lester Burnham did it. And that turned out well.

Here are some details as best I can gather:

1. He first picked her up in a Fort Myers karaoke bar after hearing her sing. What the hell is a fifteen year old doing in a bar anyway?
2. Clemens used to take her on road trips during his time with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros. I’m sure it was completely innocent. She’s just a family friend.
3. McCready used to received FedEx boxes filled with cash, courtesy of Mr. Clemens.
4. They “partied” with Michael Jordan and Monica Lewinsky. I’m not sure why this part is news.

But of course, this accusation is going to spill over into the courtroom on a totally unrelated issue. The legal fisticuffs going on between Clemens and Brian McNamee will surely bring about more on this. For one, the Clemens defense team had been trying to portray the Rocket as the ultimate family man – one who would never put his family in harm’s way by tarnishing his own reputation by using performance-enhancing drugs. Now that argument becomes very difficult to back up.

Moreover, believe it or not, Jose Canseco’s credibility (who’d a thunk it?) comes into question as well. The soon-to-be action star has been in Clemens’ corner throughout this whole issue. Although Canseco had outed several players as steroid-users in Juiced, Clemens wasn’t one of them (although he does say that the two had discussed the topic). More recently, Canseco has come out and denied that Clemens attended “the party” at his home back in 1998, one that has become a major crux in the legal proceedings. But in Juiced, Canseco wrote of Clemens:

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Roger Clemens: He’s one of the very few baseball players I know who never cheated on his wife. I was amazed by him, to be honest. His wife should be very proud of him…

I went out with him a bunch of times when there were beautiful women around, and he had a lot of opportunities and never took them. I was with him enough times to realize: This man never cheated on his wife. He was one of the rarities, the anomalies, in baseball. I can hardly think of anyone else who never cheated on his wife.

For those of you who dislike Clemens and Canseco, Happy Birthday.

Only a few more hours left of Wednesday. A bit of reading to get you through the last hump of Hump Day:

Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell would like their ice cream machine back, please. (Bradford Files) And is lack of ice cream behind Beckett’s mysterious injuries this year? (Center Field)

What it’s like when Jose Canseco hits on your girlfriend. (Diamond Hoggers)

The six-man roster continues to loom. (Washington Post) Oh god, no.

Dusty Baker doesn’t like walks, so Joey Votto isn’t walking. (Vegas Watch) Moneyball haters, rejoice!

A backward glance at Nomomania (Sam Mellinger for the Kansas City Star)

“Jeter and others may be trying to get Paul O’Neill’s number RETIRED? Has the world gone mad?” (Joe Posnanski on behalf of LaTroy Hawkins)

Why are Kenji Johjima’s pitchers throwing him under the bus? (Detect-O-Vision)

Stephen Drew is a righthanded dude who bats left. (DbacksBuzz) After burning my right arm two weeks ago, I have discovered that I can do absolutely nothing with my left arm. At all. Tip o’ the hat to you, young Stephen.

And finally, earlier in the week, Coley wrote about Boston prospect Jed Lowrie’s potential as a super-utility guy for MLB Trade Rumors. Today, Joe Haggerty writes for the Boston Metro about why the Sox are grooming their prospects that way.

And as always, if you’re reading something we should be reading, let me know!

Free coffee and baseball: This is a match made in heaven, from Sarah’s point of view. Two notes: 1. Jose Canseco is worried that he’ll get poisoned via free coffee. 2. Jonathan Papelbon is advertising free coffee (with purchase of either a flatbread sandwich or a pizza) at Dunkin’ Donuts, available the day after the Red Sox win. Sounds a bit complicated to me—and it’s cheap of DD to exclude their own employees. Not to mention that Paps looks like a cheeseball in this photo. Why didn’t they just go with a real post-game shot?

Speed: the Blue Jays are going to be swiping more bags this season. And speaking of speed, I enjoyed watching the A’s relievers throw over to first with Jason Varitek standing on the bag. Yes, let’s make sure the 35-year old catcher doesn’t steal.

Fans: It just goes to show you that the Dodgers really do have a special relationship with their fans, as LA hurler Brad Penny warmed up with a lucky fan yesterday. Across town, Angels owner Arte Moreno bought souvenirs for several fans. And it seems that Baltimore’s long-suffering faithful are finally abandoning their ballclub. Just don’t get mad when the Sox come to town in May and bring their hordes of free-spending fans with them, transforming Camden Yards into Fenway South. The O’s need the revenue.

No-hitters: Yesterday, ESPN.com carried a teaser for the Chicago-Detroit game saying the Dontrelle Willis was throwing a no-no through five innings. To me, that’s just false advertising. Sure, it’s technically accurate to say that D-Train ended up one-hitting the White Sox, but it would perhaps be more descriptive to say that Willis went five innings, while walking seven and striking out none. It was the least dominant no-no bid I’ve ever watched. An outing more worthy of ESPN’s hype would have been Jake Peavy’s two-hit complete game or Manny Parra’s legit seven-strikeout no-hit bid, carried through five innings.

Reds Rookies: On the heels of Johnny Cueto’s stunning debut Thursday, another Reds rookie pitcher impresses today. Edinson Volquez has pitched five innings so far, with seven K’s and one earned run. He’s scattered three hits and two walks.

Sleep: The Red Sox really do need it. Their odyssey from Florida to Japan to California to Toronto is starting to tell, and it’s most readily apparent on defense. Boston has already committed two errors halfway through today’s game. They had two errors yesterday, too, and have racked up a number of sloppy near-errors over the past few games. They have a day off tomorrow and open Fenway Park on Tuesday.

You may have heard by now that on March 31, Jose Canseco’s follow-up to his 2005 book “Juiced“, will be hitting the bookstore shelves. By the way, in case you didn’t make the connection, that’s Opening Day for many teams. But who expects a guy like Canseco to care about such trivialities?

Anyhow, The New York Times published a story yesterday that claimed that Major League Baseball had been in touch with the FBI  recently over an alleged incident between the former The Surreal Life participant and Detroit Tigers slugger Magglio Ordonez. According to the Times’ sources, Canseco posed a proposition to Mags – help finance my movie, or you’ll see your name in my new book.

Ordonez himself has thus far refused to talk about the topic in detail, but has apparently at least confirmed that Canseco did contact him. Mags then informed Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski about the situation, and Dombrowski alerted the Commissioner’s Office, who in turn called the FBI. The Times story goes on to mention that it wasn’t just Mags who was given this ultimatum. Supposedly, Ordonez’ agent, Scott Boras, was also approached with a similar proposition to keep his client’s name clean. However, no formal investigation was ever launched by the FBI – because Ordonez didn’t want them to.

“I didn’t want to press charges against him,” Ordóñez said. “I don’t want any problems. He is probably desperate for money. I don’t understand why he is trying to put people down.”

What’s also interesting here is that Mags is denying that he was specifically asked for money in exchange for the omission. Canseco’s camp is obviously denying the report.

So who’s lying? Did Canseco really give Ordonez and Boras an ultimatum – even if it was of the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” variety? Or did Ordonez fabricate the story as a preemptive strike to discredit Canseco, knowing full well that his name is going to be in that book?

The time for knee-jerk reactions to the Mitchell report has passed. Now it’s time to commence with the backbiting and fingerpointing. Let’s look at some reactions from a few clean players.

For the most part, the players not involved in the Mitchell report have been keeping their heads down and not saying nuthin’. Those who do speak have mostly stuck to banal comments and harmless generalizations. The players named by Mitchell have resorted to a) silence, b) denial, or c) lame-ass apologies, such as those by Brian Roberts (“I didn’t inhale!”) and Andy Pettitte (“If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize…I accept responsibility for those two days.”)

The most interesting exception to this sit-down-shut-up-boo-hoo-poor-me spectacle has been the former players who were clean, and who are pissed as hell they had to compete against these cheaters. If there is any doubt that using steroids was cheating (and nasty, no-good, dirty, cheateriffic cheating at that), listen to the words of folks like Joe Oliver and Mike Greenwell. As Oliver wrote in an email  to Boston Herald columnist Joe Horrigan,

I had to vie for a job every year and now I know it had something to do with certain players having a competitive edge on me…I spent all that time in the early hours running and lifting weights, these guys would shoot up and be done and get stronger, faster, and the owners knew who they were and the GM’s knew who they were. Every time I argued for a contract, I was competing with juiced catchers in the same boat looking for a job. They got the higher paying jobs and I got screwed.

That reflects the sentiments of Mike Greenwell, another former Red Sox player. He was never the kind of guy who got the awards or the glory or the big-money deal. He just showed up to work and played hard. (In fact, he turned running into the Green Monster into a kind of art, occasionally kicking the wall in retaliation for some of those bumps and bruises.) He had a couple of All-Star game appearances, over the course of his 12-year career, and then faded gracefully from view. His best season was 1988, when he came in second in MVP voting. And who should happen to have beaten him out that year? Why, Jose Canseco, who just that year had his 40-homer, 40-steal season. Now that Canseco has fully admitted to using steroids, shouldn’t the Gator get the hardware? That’s what he said back when Jose’s first book came out:

“Where’s my MVP?” Greenwell told the Fort Myers News-Press. “[Canseco's] an admitted steroid user. I was clean. If they’re going to start putting asterisks by things, let’s put one by the MVP.”

[...]

“I do have a problem with losing the MVP to an admitted steroids user,” Greenwell told the News-Press, adding that not winning the award likely cost him millions of dollars.

Even Curt Schilling, whose comments on the subject have been mostly of the don’t-make-waves variety (for a change) admitted that the idea of an uneven playing field disturbed him.

As a competitor, the one thing I can’t help but think is how different, or if at all different, my career numbers would be if I was playing against a level playing field and in an era that was already offensive-tailored and knowing that a lot of guys, well, everybody that’s been named, has done something against me in the past.

As for my part, I’m glad to see at least some players, current and former, standing up for themselves. Maybe it will help the players’ union remember, the next time they’re tempted to stonewall even the most pathetic, flaccid, symbolic steroid testing program, that it’s not just the Cansecos and McGwires and Bondses that they represent. But (heavy sigh) probably not.

PS—Just look at those pictures of Oliver and Greenwell and compare them with this shot of Canseco. Even with his catching gear on, Oliver looks like the proverbial ten-pound weakling next to Jose. And Mike Greenwell is a dead ringer for my fifth-grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Grosky. You have the Incredible Hulk in a mullet, there, versus Mr. Grosky. This playing field has a steeper incline than the Matterhorn.

Earlier this week over at SI.com, Steve Hoffstetter came out with a right-on-the-money screed about the Hall of Fame voting. Not the Mark McGwire boondoggle—the Dante Bichette shocker.

The real story of last week’s National Baseball Hall of Fame voting is not that Mark McGwire only got 128 votes — it’s that Dante Bichette received three. I didn’t realize that the Bichettes were voting this year.

Bichette has always been vocal about his belief in both God and Jesus. Even if the two of them voted, that still doesn’t explain the third ballot.

Indeed, did Dante Bichette even deserve to be on the ballot at all? This brings me to something that irked me when the ballots were first released, but which I never got around to formulating into complete sentences here on UmpBump: Scott Brosius. He was on the ballot this year, too. He didn’t get any votes (thank God) but what was he doing on the ballot in the first place? If he hadn’t played for the Yankees (and during the Yankees’ glory years), he never would have even made the ballot. His mere presence there is an insult to me. And also an insult to every other run-of-the-mill 90s third baseman who didn’t make the HOF ballot.

Plus I’d like to know who the six people are who voted for Jose Canseco. The walking syringe?! Mr. Sleazy-Memoir-Writer? And who are the two people who voted for Ken Caminiti, who also admitted to juicing and who even spent time in the slammer (yes, kids, actual JAIL) for cocaine posession. And the one person who voted for Jay Buhner. Jay Buhner is like that kid from high school you completely forget about until your five-year reunion, and then you see them and you’re like, “Oh yeah….that kid.” I don’t even remember anything about Jay Buhner’s actual career. All I remember is that he looked like a pirate. See? A pirate!

For the full tally of rando position players, druggies, and brigands who got votes, click here.

As for who does belong in Cooperstown, let me go on the record as saying that I hope that Goose Gossage and Jim Rice make it in next year. Unlike Barry Bonds, who just went on the record arguing—surprise!— for the induction of McGwire and Pete Rose, adding, in typical douchey fashion, “I’m sure I’m going to break the [home run] record this year. But right now, I’m just thinking about golf.”

As for me, I’m trying to decide what is more bogus: the fact that people actually think Bichette, Buhner, and Caminiti belong in the Hall, or the fact that they’re now part of our tag cloud.

God love Jose Canseco. This is a guy who has been consistently entertaining since the day he stepped onto a major league field in 1985. First he wowed us with his tape-measure home runs and his 40-40 season. Then he wowed us by bedding Madonna and buying several Ferraris. Then he used said Ferraris to get tape-measure speeding tickets and run over his wife. Later, the hits kept on coming as he assisted a home run with his head and blew out his elbow in his first and last major league pitching assignment.

Even after he retired, the hits kept on coming. He wrote a very entertaining book, which we all thought was mostly fiction, and then it turned out to be all true! Baseball’s most honest man! Then he started playing for a very, very minor league team in San Diego, only to demand a trade after one game. Now, with his new team the Long Beach Armada, he went to the Golden Baseball League All-Star Game, where in front of a sellout crowd of 3,111, he proceeded to win the home run derby by hitting several balls over the light tower in left and one over the scoreboard in center (winning $250, which he promised to spend entirely on beer for his teammates), and then pitched an inning in the actual game, flashing his mighty knuckleball en route to allowing 4 earned runs in 1/3 of an inning.

“Anything to entertain the fans,” he said.

What a guy. Sure he’s a little crazy, and has more than a little missing upstairs, but he refuses to stop entertaining us fans. And if the Major Leagues won’t let him do it in the Bigs, darned if he’s going to stop. No, he’s going to go wherever they’ll have him (well at least after his trade demands have been met), and keep on putting on the Jose Canseco show. For us. The fans.

Here’s hoping he doesn’t die young like all those other steroid users. Personally, I hope he becomes a big league manager someday, so his antics may once again grace the fields of major league ballparks.