The Roger Clemens Trial Is Still Bizarre And Pointless

We're well in to the seventh week of the Roger Clemens perjury trial—holy christ, seven weeks? You can be forgiven for ignoring this one, the second trial, since the first ended with a mistrial on day two. Most thinking people assume Clemens used PEDs, and most thinking people don't really care anymore, and the obscene amounts of taxpayer money spent on the Ahabian investigation and Hutzian prosecution just make this whole thing one giant exercise in pointlessness. Sorry, I meant "American Justice."

Despite this case being about perjury and obstruction and not actually steroids, the prosecution has to prove that he lied about steroid use, and therefore to prove that he used steroids. So this case is about steroids. Thus, Clemens's defense consists of witnesses who will say he never juiced. One of those witnesses took the stand today, a man I never thought I'd think about again: Charlie O'Brien, former catcher for just about every team, and subject of three of the 10 best/worst baseball cards of all time. ( Permullet Charlie, Fat Charlie, and We-Couldn't-License-A-Photo-Of-Him-Actually-Playing Charlie.)

What do you think was Charlie's big contribution to jurisprudence?

"That pitch right there – split-fingered fastball," he said. "Left-handed batters just had a tough time hitting it. … It definitely made his game much tougher.''

Charlie O'Brien—Charlie freaking O'Brien—testifying under oath in federal court that Clemens had a good 1997 because he had a good splitter. This goddamn trial, man. And it doesn't even matter if he's found guilty or not guilty; the jury consists of 12 people too dumb to get out of sitting through this crap for months.