Customer Reviews

American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a splendid piece of work. The portrait of Clemens that emerges is itself captivating: the writers offer a detailed, patient, wonderfully human account of how the very things that made the man so indisputably great on the hill - willfulness, absolute indomitability - led to his spectacular public undoing. But what is to me even more gripping in the book is the legal and procedural story it unfolds, about precisely how steroids came to be the object of so much political and legal scrutiny in the first place. It's a story that spans more than a decade, criss-crosses the country, is filled astounding intricacy and intrigue, and features a series of vibrant, wonderfully-drawn characters. If you want to the richest backstory, not just on Clemens, but on the history and ongoing place of steroids in baseball, you must get hold of this book.

I don't normally read baseball tell-all books, but I was drawn to this story because Clemens has insisted on maintaining his innocence despite the vast evidence, and I wanted to learn more. What a great decision! The book is excellent. Well written and thoroughly researched, I can't put it down. The characters (many of whom I only knew from media portrayals) really come alive. More than just a retelling of Clemens & McNamee's stories, the book portrays the entire steroid culture in baseball, from the points of view of the players (users and "clean"), suppliers, hangers-on, ownership, Congress, the media... it tells it all. Up there with MoneyBall and the Halberstam books, this is a must-read baseball book. I highly recommend it.

This book, with a little over 9000 locations in the Kindle edition, is quite a lengthy read. The authors take painstaking care to present very in depth accounts of conversations, emails, phone calls, court records, and other communication between Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee, Andy Petitte and other figures involved.

I found it very interesting in the beginning, and then found it to become very lengthy toward the latter half of the book, with this part mostly dealing with Clemens, McNamee and Petittes' appearances before congress in 2008. The writers judge Clemens to be guilty right from the beginning, and say so in the first few pages of the book. I don't know how anyone could believe anything Clemens says about the matter after carefully reviewing what is in this book.

Overall very interesting for baseball fanatics, but probably not for for the casual fan or non-sports reader.

To conclude that Roger Clemens took steroids and then lied about it does not take the combined talents of the Daily News' Investigative Team long. But the fascinating part of this book--why I kept reading the whole way through--is how exigently they connect the dots, using small details and lengthy court filings to slowly piece together a damning report. Lively writing makes this read like an easy feature magazine article, but the research is evident on each page.

Before December 2007, Roger Clemens, winner of seven Cy Young awards, had established himself as one of baseball's preeminent players. There had been rumors and accusations of his using illegal performance enhancing drugs such as steroids and human growth hormones, of course, but he vehemently denied it. But when the famous Mitchell Report was published and exposed the truth, it ruined Roger Clemens' reputation and career.

Roger Clemens did not really need to use the performance enhancing drugs to enhance his career. In his youth he had natural talent and ability, and he was an extraordinary pitcher, and so he did not need to use the harmful and illegal drugs. Had he never used the drugs, he still would have been considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time. So, the question that baffles baseball fans is why was he even tempted to seek them?

"American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime", despite its unwieldy title, is a gripping and engaging non-fiction book that reads like a crime-fiction novel. This is truly an impressive accomplishment of the authors. The four authors, sports investigative reporters of the New York Daily News: Teri Thomson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe, and Christian Red, have worked together as a team, not unlike a baseball team at a game, to produce this highly readable book.

It's hard to overestimate the devastation you feel when your childhood idol is destroyed methodically by a team of journalists who combine the careful reporting of Seymour Hersh with the narrative zeal of Buzz Bissinger. I don't know whether to resent the authors or admire them, but all I can say to anyone interested in baseball, steroids, or the ever-evolving idea of American Hubris is: read this book.

American Icon is the magnum opus of the New York Daily News's sports investigative team that gives a detailed account of "the fall of Roger Clemens and the rise of steroids in America's pastime." The book's authors Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keefe and Christian Red take on the Herculean task of covering the last eleven years of Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee's relationship as well as the story of baseball's performance enhancing drug abuse. The result is a strange mix of biography, punditry, political history, true crime, and tabloid journalism. Why exactly it is titled `American Icon' is elusive as many Americans do not consider Roger Clemens to be emblematic of American identity. Barack Obama and Sonya Sotomayor even eclipse him in this category, but I digress.

The authors make McNamee look like a sympathetic character telling the truth, but he does seem to have the stronger case. He had no desire to come out against Clemens and only gained the avoidance of prison time by doing so. He was caught between a rock and hard place and found himself reluctantly throwing the star pitcher under the bus. To his great fortune he was protected by two stellar lawyers pro bono who defused and deflated Clemens's bulldog defense. Most importantly the tangible evidence seems to be on his side. Clemens now faces public humiliation, legal defeat, and perjury charges as he has been exposed as an unfaithful husband, inconsistent in his testimony, and the victim of his own denials. His Hall of Fame career has almost been forgotten in the wake of the Mitchell Report.

Whatever one makes of the contents of this book, one will be left feeling that baseball is tainted. The ugliness of the lives of superstar athletes is laid out before the reader in exquisite detail. Drug abuse, marital infidelity, debauchery, deceitfulness, arrogance, and intimidation mark the pathetic lives of people their fans so naively envy. From the players union to the pitcher's mound, baseball seems rotten through and through. By far and away the strongest point the book makes is that the news-gathering and reporting of ESPN and sports writers in general should not be considered trustworthy. Of ESPN and Peter Gammons they write, "Gammons was in something of a difficult spot. His conflict symbolized that of ESPN itself, trying to appear as a legitimate news-gathering operation without harming its role as baseball's broadcast partner and head cheerleader." The conflict of interest could not be more glaring in that sports journalism cannot both serve objective reporting standards that follow the evidence where it leads and be committed to creating enthusiasm and fanfare among viewers and readers.

Those who love baseball will find themselves in a similar difficult spot. We want to get behind our favorite teams and cheer for the success of our favorite players. We want to honor hard work and fair play. But with the ongoing revelations of what basically amounts to cheating, how can we declare our love for a game played by cheaters?

What makes American Icon highly readable and entertaining is not so much the "drug story", though that is well documented, but the details concerning the cast of characters. Briam McNamee, a former New York City policeman with a P.hD from a diploma mill, who might have been outstanding if he had stayed in police work; Andy Pettite's father who because of ilness, was a user of Human Growth Hormone, his son eventually admitting that he too used it to cure a sore arm. And, of course, Roger Clemens,prodigious athlete that he was, appaently using illegal drugs to give himself "an edge" as he told Mike Stanton (another user). Not to mention the lawyers and minor chracters that make the book almost like a novel.

I believe American Icon tells a very strong and convincing problem regarding the drug problem in American Sports especially baseball and steroids. The 3 authors here do a great job of examining the culture of drug abuse in baseball and more specifically how Roger Clemens used steroids to cheat and extend his career. Most critically, the book demonstrates that lengths that Clemens used, including destroying the names of others who dared to endanger his own carefully crafted image.

The writing is at times overly analytical and does drag during the section detailing the congressional hearings. This results in less attention being paid to Clemens other transgressions which garner only a chapter of mention towards the end of the book. I also found that the book focuses on proving Clemens and overlooks the transgressions of Brian McNamee is trainer, Andy Pettite and Jose Canseco. Still it is a solid book and well worth your time to read if you are a real baseball fan and want a reading about how sorted steroids have become in baseball.

American Icon is a terrific piece of team investigative journalism on the steroid (codeword: "B-12") era in professional sports and the sad demise of the reputation of pitcher Roger Clemens. Whether or not Clemens perjured himself before Congress, he emerges in this fast-paced indictment as a liar, a womanizer, and a bully travelling in the guise of a Cy Young Award winning hurler. Clemens appears to have used steroids and HGH on numerous occasions, resulting in his middle-age bulked-up comeback on the mound. This fine book paints a sad picture of how the desire to win at all costs and to be a sports hero forever collided with the relentless process of aging, poignant in the case of a fatherless boy who grew up in the Texas culture of sports, body building, and then steroid trafficking. A bit long and repetitive, yes, we know the story from the sports pages, but a fabulous investigation of an American sports tragedy. Buy it, read it and weep.