Posted by dahsdebater on 1/9/2014 2:52:00 PM (view original):
I just can't get on that train, tec. You're basically saying the standard should just be to trust anyone who accuses a player of using PEDs, and assume anyone who hasn't been accused isn't a user? That doesn't seem like a reasonable way to set a baseline to me.
Of course accusations shouldn't be blindly accepted as fact. The accusations need to taken in context, and the situation needs to pass the smell test.
Let's take Clemens and the comments by Andy Pettitte as an example.
Clemens was Pettitte's idol when he was a kid. He later became his teammate, and they became close friends. Before Pettitte's comments, there was never any stories about any kind of falling out between the two. So what would Pettitte's motiviation be for throwing Clemens under the bus the way he did with a lie? Granted, he used extremely poor judgement in ratting out his friend. But I can't think of a reason that makes sense other than Pettitte decided to come clean about his own use, and out of some sort of misguided sense of guilt he felt that he needed to drop a dime on Clemens. He had nothing to gain by doing this (other than maybe a clean conscious), and a lot to lose.
I can't think of a good reason why Pettitte would out himself and then lie about Clemens by outing him as well. That just doesn't make sense.
Nor does the "Andy must have misremembered" excuse that Clemens gave when he denied Pettitte's statement. Accusing a close friend of something that's going to cause a huge shitstorm by "mistake" doesn't make much sense either.
So when you look at Pettitte's comments in that light, you have three possibilities: (a) he was telling the truth; (b) he "misremembered"; or (c) he lied.
Only one of those makes sense given the circumstances.