In the past few years baseball steroid use has come to the forefront of scrutiny with a seeming endless number of stars admitting to or being accused of using performance enhancing drugs. In response to this, baseball steroid policy has toughened considerably but what are now being discovered are transgressions by stars before this policy took effect. The greatest name mentioned in connection with this offense is none other than pitcher Roger Clemens.

Here, at Electro-Mech, we not only provide you with electronic baseball scoreboards but also information on all things sports- baseball included. We cover everything from the history of the game to biographies of your favorite players to controversy around the sport. For now, we’ll focus on Roger Clemens.

The Roger Clemens bio will be written with deservedly lavish praise regardless of the end result of the steroids scandal. Since 1984, when he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox, he has been the best pitcher in the league. He has won the Cy Young Award a record seven times, he has pulled a triple crown (leading the league in strikeouts, lowest ERA and total wins simultaneously) in three different seasons. He may go down as the best pitcher in history when, over 23 years in the major leagues, he has a career ERA of just 3.27 and leads the record books in many categories. Remarkably, his best season came in 2005, at the age of 43, with an ERA of 1.87 and a 13-8 record. Clemens, based on his stats alone, would be a shoe-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame and he may yet be elected.

However, what is standing in between him and his legacy is the accusation from his former trainer that he was injected over several season with Human Growth Hormone, one of several performance enhancing drugs. Prior to this former pitcher Jason Grimsley has also accused Clemens of using anabolic steroids along with HGH. Roger Clemens steroid use became a full blown story. Release on December 13, 2007, The Mitchell Report, which was commissioned to investigate baseball steroid use, ended up being riddled with Clemens references. Brian McNamee, Clemens former trainer and friend, alleged that he personally delivered and injected Clemens (and even his wife) with steroids and HGH over three seasons when he worked for the New York Yankees. McNamee also fingered Andy Pettite, a Yankee pitcher at the time and Clemens’ friend, who promptly admitted his use of the drugs. Pettite eventually would report that Clemens had admitted steroid use to him years earlier.

Clemens immediately denied using any steroids, aware of the stigma and reassessment of his career that would come with such an admittance. He was the highest profile player ever accused of using steroids up to that point. His agent provided a long report to the media showing Clemens’ variance in performance versus the average pitcher with little difference. Another report by a group of professor disputed this assertion. Clemens then went on the television show “60 Minutes” to categorically deny any illegal use and to claim McNamee had committed slander against him. Clemens was questioned in front of Congress regarding his use of steroids and stuck with his story, contradicting McNamee and Pettite. The Congressional panel was unconvinced by inconsistencies in his story and have ordered a full investigation which is still ongoing.

Roger Clemens steroid story took another hit in February 2009, when a judge dismissed his slander suit against McNamee. Though the ruling did not offer Clemens any redemption, it also did not damage him any more. The judge’s ruling was based on a technicality that since McNamee was being forced to testify by federal investigators, he could not be held to a slander ruling. For Roger Clemens bio it was an unsatisfactory ending. Unfortunately, for Clemens pitching in the years before the baseball steroid policy was written down may have allowed him to operate in a grey zone that will keep him out of Cooperstown.