But of course!

My dad and I always thought that when Roger Clemens picked up Mike Piazza's broken bat in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series and fired it back at him (truly unbelievable to see live; photo, at right, of when Piazza was tempted to charge Clemens immediately after) that Clemens was hopped up on steroids.

Now, thanks to former Sen. George J. Mitchell, we know he was! (Link here; scroll down to page 167 of the main report to find the information on Clemens.) Quoting Mitchell: "During the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens made it clear he was ready to use steriods again. McNamee injected Clemens four to six times in the buttocks with testosterone labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin..." It goes on to say Clemens received an equal number of injections of human growth hormone at about the same time.

Bill Simmons, aka the "Sports Guy" columnist on ESPN.com's Page 2, who amid lots of chaff has an equal amount of great wheat, also remembers Clemens' bat-throwing incident. (He also has several other insightful thoughts on Clemens' post-Red Sox career now that it's been tainted in his most recent column.) Really, why else would Clemens throw a bat at Piazza?! I seem to remember his explanation at the time being he thought it was the ball. Well, then why didn't he throw it to first base?

Baseball's steroids scandal has always had a mixed effect on me. Yes, my era's greatest pitcher -- Clemens -- and greatest home run hitter -- outfielder Barry Bonds -- have now been firmly identified as cheaters, with all the implications that has on the integrity, purity and inspiration that professional athletics/games might have. But they would have been great players anyway, certainly with some of the sport's most impressive statistics ever. Without steroids would Bonds have hit 634 total home runs, 478 or the record-breaking 762 he now has? Perhaps not the third, but somewhere around the first. The steroids perhaps enabled him to extend his peak from 1992 to 2004, when most players' would've ended six years earlier (and geez, at the age of 42, his OBP last year was .480!), but bring down the 73 home runs in 2001 to a more appropriate statistical mean of 47 and he breaks Hank Aaron's career record next year or early 2009. And aren't steroids supposed to make one's body break down?

Way to go, Sen. Mitchell, for synthesizing it all in the report, even if it doesn't break new ground beyond his interviews with the trainers Radomski and McNamee. (Though, those sources, break a lot of ground.) Eleven players on the 2000 Los Angeles Dodgers! Almost as many from the Yankees' World Series run last decade! (Full disclosure: I'm a Mets fan whose all-time favorite player is Mike Piazza. I mean, even Belle and Sebastian wrote a song about him!) I think my favorite part is the e-mail from Red Sox GM Theo Epstein -- only 33 years old! -- talking about reliever Eric Gagne. Mid-season last year, the Sox were thinking about acquiring him to bolster their bullpen, when Epstein wrote a scout, "I know the Dodgers [Gagne's former team] think he was a steroids guy. Maybe so." The scout replied, yes, so, and it turns out, very yes so. (See page 219.) Funny enough, Gagne wasn't taking steroids by the time he arrived with the Sox and he was the world's worst pitcher for those two months. Equally funny, the Mets learned the same lesson with reliever Guillermo Mota, who sucked dead frogs last year upon returning from a fifty-game suspension for steroids use. Who would think that after a player stops using steroids his performance would decline? The Mets, that's who.

Anyway, perhaps in summation: Clemens, Bonds and pitcher Andy Pettite -- Clemens' longtime pal, teammate, and now, admitted HGH user -- do not get Hall of Fame votes from me.

Oh, and what do you think former Sen. Mitchell does on, say, Monday? Vacation in the Bahamas? He doesn't seem like a Bahamas kind of guy to me. Trip to Paris? Enjoy the gigantic snowstorm heading his home state Maine's way? Do you think he shovels snow? I mean, you're a former senator who declined a Supreme Court nomination, negotiated a peace deal with Northern Ireland and wrote scathing reports of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and Major League Baseball. What does he do at 10 a.m. Monday when he rolls into the firm? (Which, by the way, is the same one as my dad's; how weird is that?) Check his e-mail, I guess.