The Product of Miscommunication?

RAB had an interesting post (by Ben K.) in regards to Roger Clemens:

Tellingly enough, Clemens did not really answer the question when someone asked him why he let McNamee inject him, and he said that McNamee provided his injections. So basically, we can see the defense he’s carving out for himself: He thought B12 just meant B12 while McNamee, taking a cue from accepted baseball insider lingo, thought that B12 meant steroids. So there you go. We’re right back where we started, and this pissing contest is just getting started.

I do believe that Clemens did offer some form of an explanation as to why he allowed McNamee to inject him (he reportedly thought McNamee had a medical degree), although, one can debate the nature of the response, especially in terms of its legitimacy and believability. Either way, RAB brings up a good point about B-12 being “insider speak” within the steroid culture that had seemingly consumed much of baseball.

Vitamin B-12, which is not a steroid, had actually become a codeword for steroids, as described by Jose Canseco in his book “Juiced.” Canseco can be credited for bring this insider terminology (in baseball) to the external world. Here’s an excerpt from his first book (p. 211) which speaks on the word and its use in clubhouses.

It was so open, the trainers would jokingly call the steroid injections “B12 shots,” and soon the players had picked up on that little code name, too. You’d hear them saying it out loud in front of each other: “I need to go in and get a B12 shot,” a player would say, and everyone would laugh. (Of course, that was the kind of joke you really only made around other steroid users, because obviously they were in the same boat as you. What were they going to do, tell on you? Not hardly.)

So, according to Canseco, B-12 was coded language for steroids, or a steroid injection. Now, we all know that Roger Clemens has openly stated that Brian McNamee did, in fact, inject him with Vitamin B-12. Could this have been a mix-up or could this eventually be portrayed as a mix-up in the way that RAB predicts? I heard Seth Everret (from MLB.com), discussing the Clemens’ situation directly after the conference, and he made a similar comment. Maybe this whole thing was a misunderstanding between the athlete and his trainer. Maybe Roger Clemens asked for a B-12 shot, thinking he’d get a vitamin supplement, and McNamee gave him what he thought Clemens wanted– steroids.

Well, this still seems unlikely. In his book “Juiced,” Jose Canseco, who is no vision of truth and morality yet has been right in the past, also stated that, not only was B-12 a codeword for steroids and steroid injections, but Roger Clemens actually knew of this association between the phrases.

It was the pitchers that kept the “B12” joke going. For example, I’ve never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he never told me that he did. But we’ve talked about what steroids could do for you, in which combinations, and I’ve heard him use the phrase “B12 shot” with respect to others.

A lot of pitchers did steroids to keep up with hitters. If everyone else was getting stronger and faster, then you wanted to get stronger and faster, too. If you were a pitcher, and the hitters were all getting stronger, that made your job that much more difficult. Roger used to talk about that a lot. (Canseco, p. 211-212).

This contradicts the “I didn’t know that B-12 meant steroids” argument that some may think Clemens will pursue. If he does pursue this route, people will constantly challenge him and use these quotes by Canseco to say that he is lying. If he was doing steroids, he can’t really venture down this path because its clearly not foolproof.

Also, this quote from Canseco’s book even questions what Clemens said in his press conference. In the conference, he mentioned that he rarely discussed steroids (to other players) and only talked about when it was in the news or ”in passing.”

Peter Abraham (and his friend) offers another suggestion as to what my occur.

Is it possible McNamee injected Roger Clemens with steroids but told him they were painkillers or B-12? McNamee was a nobody until he started training Clemens. Might he have been so desperate to keep his job that he resorted to steroids to give Clemens a false sense of accomplishment?

This conclusion would allow Clemens to be painted as a victim, providing him with an affordable way out of a tremendously difficult situation, while maintaining some form of dignity and respectability. Of course, the only way this would work for him is if McNamee comes forward and states that this is what actually occurred.