The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime
by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton,
Michael O’Keeffe, and Christian Red
With Roger Clemen’s astonishing fall from grace at its center, the New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team has written the definitive book on corruption and the steroids era in Major League Baseball. An extraordinarily inside look at Clemens, baseball players such as Andy Pettitte and Jose Canseco, trainer Brian McNamee, and the myriad lawyers, politicians, drug dealers and sexual trysts that all make up the incredible Clemens story.
Knopf editor Peter Gethers addresses the question of how this book differs from the upcoming release from HarperCollins on Clemens.
“The Harper book is a biography of Roger Clemens. Our book is not a bio – it’s a book of investigative journalism by the Sports Investigative Team for the NY Daily News – the reporters who have broken almost every big story on Clemens and every big steroid story over the past 3 years.
While Clemens is the center of the book, it his role in the steroid investigation that dominates when he’s on stage. But the book gives equal time to Brian McNamee – the trainer who brought Clemens down – as well as the various lawyers, big time sports agents, Andy Pettitte, his father Tom Pettitte, Jose Canseco, politicians, even various drug dealers, criminals and porn stars. Ours is a muck-raking book – examining, among other things, the whole gym rat, drug culture of Texas athletes and dealers.
Clemens is the villain of the book – and the book has enough proof of various perjuries on his part to do him some serious legal damage. None of this book’s major sources spoke to the author of the Harper book.
I can give you more if you need it. But think of it this way – we’ve got the Woodward and Bernstein of sports journalism writing about Clemens, focusing on the Senate investigation and the truth behind the drug accusations – and in doing so, exposing the whole drug and sex and cheating culture of baseball.” – Peter Gethers, Knopf
-Erica