What Roger Clemens Should Have Said

Did you see Clemens on 60 Minutes last night?

Yeah, I didn't believe him either.

Bill Dwyre, columnist for the L.A. Times, offers some sage advice that Roger Dodger should have gotten from his lawyers, but didn't. Here's his first suggestion on how to fight off a story like this.

* You don't wait three weeks. You call a news conference the next day, or maybe the day after. You need only enough time to read the report and prepare to respond to each and every accusation. You are innocent, after all, so you want everybody to come and ask their questions. You want it open, free-wheeling, immediate. Not sanitized in some TV studio with only one questioner. Not used for a network ratings bonanza and edited for time.

Read the rest here.

What Dwyre suggests is a perfect path to clear your name - if you're innocent. If you have nothing to hide, then you hide nothing. Maybe that's why Roger chose the other path - shouting, pouting, glaring, but offering no other proof than his own word.

Red Sox 4, Rockies ... um ... Zero

Well, so much for that.

The Red Sox are this year's champions. They pummeled the Rockies, fair and square, in four straight games. You can't say the Rockies didn't fight - they threw a couple of good scares into the Red Sox, especially in game three, when they clawed their way back (almost) from a 6-0 deficit.

But then the Sox scored another three runs. And then another one for good measure.

The Rockies kept trying to fight back, only to be squashed again and again. But give them credit for fighting.

I live in Seattle, and I feel a little bit like a bandwagoner - at least I feel like some people might accuse me of that. But I can legitimately claim the Rockies as one of my teams. I've seen them live, after all. I saw them before Coors Field existed, back when they were playing in Mile High Stadium (the first one, not the new Invesco Field or whatever). And I saw them back when Vinny Castilla and Andres Gallaraga and Dante Bichette were the Blake Street Bombers - lots of home runs, not so much with the wins.

Mrs. B and I had been going out for only nine months when we took a road trip from Seattle to Denver. We saw the sights: the badlands in Wyoming, Grand Tetons National Park, and Rocky Mountain N.P. in Colorado. And we want to see the Rockies at Coors Field.

I've been following these boys since their first season. I remember their history. I haven't been following them much this year, but watching them now brings back all the memories from their early years. I'm thrilled for their success, regardless of the World Series outcome. The Rockies are a hell of a team. They've got a great group of players who all play as a team and pull for each other. They've developed a spirit of winning and camaraderie that has turned the Rockies into a serious contender.

They'll be back.

There will be pennants won in the future. Matt Holliday have a couple more MVP seasons. There are superstars in the making on that team.

The Rockies will be back in the World Series. They have to go back and avenge themselves.

Congrats Red Sox! (Who my wife was rooting for the whole time - even though she hasn't watched an inning of baseball all season.)

Red Sox 1, Rockies 0

Things to remember:

• It's a seven-game series. Winning by twelve runs does not give you an automatic lead in any of the next six games.
• If they were going to lose, it was going to happen against Beckett.
• The Rockies hadn't played a live baseball team for eight days. Now they have, and they've got their blood flowing again. Scrimmages and practice sessions are no substitute for the real thing.
• They got embarrassed last night. This is the most important thing to me. Last night left them bruised, battered, and embarrassed. A team in that condition is a dangerous team to face.

The Rockies hadn't lost in over five weeks before last night's debacle. Now they remember what it feels like to lose. They also might be remembering that feeling of ... well, failure. The Colorado Rockies have been also-rans since their inaugural season in 1995. Now that they got spanked in their first World Series game, pundits and commentators all around the country are questioning whether they even deserve to be there. (This came out before game 1, but here's a particularly noxious column savaging the Rockies.) So they've got something to prove - again, that only makes them a more dangerous team.

The Red Sox are feeling proud, cocky, confident. The Rockies are feeling angry, humiliated, and hungry for revenge.

Advantage: Rockies.

Let's see if they can bounce back tonight and make it a series.

Rockies win!!!

I don't believe it. I just watched the game unfold on ESPN's GameCast, and I still can't believe they won.

The Colorado Rockies won their one-game playoff with the San Diego Padres in 13 innings. They were tied after 12 innings. They fell behind by two runs in the top of the 13th. And then they came roaring back, scoring two quick runs and completing the comeback with a sacrifice fly. Game over.

They did it for the fans who were lined up at 7 a.m., filling every parking spot on Blake Street. They did it for the folks who hold up the purple Helton sign underneath the Rockpile on anonymous summer nights. They did it for Ed the parking attendant who didn't have to tell the arriving players what he wanted for his birthday. They did it for those who didn't leave after four hours, whose voices were gone from screaming and arms cramped from clapped.