Mitchell Report Appendix A on P.E.U.K.P.T.C.M.S.

that stands for Performance Enhancing Underage Karaoke Performers Turned Country Music Singers. as everyone knows by now, family man roger clemens is into 15-year old girls. not that i blame him, because as a famous man once said, "Fifteen is a fun age." but sometimes it's just better to leave the shards of Mike Piazza's broken bat barrel on the ground. ya know, don't act on your impulses. keep it in your woolen baseball trousers, if you will.

there have been varying reports about the nature of clemens' and McCready's relationship. clemens, true to form, denies that it was ever "inappropriate." [sidenote: what's appropriate to clemens probably isn't appropriate to the rest of us. just a guess.] he said in a statement that McCready was a "close family friend." i called Debbie on my Verizon wireless phone to ask her about this, but the call was dropped before she could verify. i should have gone with Cingular AT&T!

so let's break it down. they met when she was 15 and he was 28. lacking further detail, this was either during his 1990 or 1991 season, both historically good years for him. [sidenote: unfairly in 1990, clemens lost the Cy Young to Bob Welch, who had a very good year, to be sure, but was bolstered by his 27 freaking wins. his ERA+ that season was 126. clemens', on the other hand, was 213, good for 25th best all-time for a single season. pretty awesome.] i wish wish wish i knew exactly when they met, because i could make a really good argument here. from August (the month he turned 28) to the end of the season, his ERA was 1.11. let's give McCready the benefit of the doubt here and pretend that they met on his 28th birthday, because that's sort of what this post is about.

the next season, clemens won his third Cy Young award. is McCready to blame? we can't know for certain (perhaps John Daly's ex-wife had something to do with it), but all signs point to "yes."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" you're probably saying. "According to McCready's father, the relationship between roger and Mindy didn't become physical until 1998, after she broke up with superman Dean Cain (who is probably really, really happy right now)." if that is what you're saying, then i'm saying "nice use of a spoken parenthetical," and also, "ah-ha! clemens won his fifth Cy Young award in 1998! which bolsters my argument even more!" detracting from my argument, however, is the fact that he also won the Cy Young in 1997, a year before things got hot and heavy between the two sparkling paradigms of American star power. but i ask you this: what if her father is misremembering?

let's do a thought experiment: close your eyes. summon your innermost powers of nostalgia and whisk yourself back twelve years to the golden age of 1996. you're in the backyard, perhaps lying in a hammock in the shade, sipping on a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. you don't give a damn about the internet because really the only thing you use it for is to go on AOL and go into chat rooms and talk to strangers from Wisconsin or Malaysia and you don't even know what paypal or myspace or "2 girls 1 cup" is, not yet anyway. the radio is tuned to your favorite country radio station and the number one hit in the nation is playing: "Guys Do It All the Time," by Mindy McCready. for some reason, a dose of futuristic consciousness pervades your mind as you listen to the second verse:

I know I left my clothes all over the place
And I took your twenty bucks
No I didn't get the front yard cut
Cause I had to wash my truck
Will you bring me a cold one baby
Turn on the TV
We'll talk about this later
There's a ballgame I wanna see...

this is absolutely ducking uncanny. the song reached #1 on the charts on September 14th. in clemens' very next start, he threw a complete game shutout. this is no coincidence, my friends. what this is is irrefutable evidence that roger clemens was shlepping (sp?) Mindy McCready at least two years before her dad was even aware.

there is nothing this man is incapable of. except for batting against the Mets.