Coriolanus and Roger Clemens

Everyone knows by now that the "Mitchell Report," put out by the committee chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell (D-ME), implicated many present and past major league players in the growing "steroids controversy." The biggest fish netted by Mitchell's investigation was Roger Clemens, a 45 year-old, seven-time Cy Young-winning fireball-throwing pitcher for the (most recently) New York Yankees and Houston Astros. Clemens' trainer testified to the Mitchell folk that he injected Clemens with now-proscribed steroids and human growth hormone more than a dozen times in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Clemens vigorously, and unctuously, rejects the charges and has filed a defamation suit against the former trainer, no doubt driven in this by the same fierce determination to intimidate and obliterate opponents that seemed to make his 24 year major-league career an unprecedented success. While people are lining up on either side of the controversy now, and before a Congressional oversight committee gets to take a crack at the problem in February, I thought I would add my two cents to the issue.

Rather than siding with one side or the other (though I tend to believe Clemens was guilty), I would like to compare his plight to that of Coriolanus, the great Roman warrior, as described by Shakespeare in the little-read tragedy of that name. Shakespeare's point was that this warrior, who has all the accoutrements of valor and virtue, and is a master at kicking butt in pugilistic endeavors, completely fell apart when he had to present himself in the public arena and win public acclaim. The "tragedy" of Coriolanus is that the skills necessary for a successful military career for him were exactly opposite the skills needed for him successfully to acquit himself in the public arena. Let me tell his story first, and then relate it to Roger Clemens in his current dilemma.

Shakepeare's Coriolanus

Coriolanus (he is called Martius until Act I, Scene ix) was born in humble circumstances and reared by a mother who realized that the only way to attain glory and recognition for herself was through her son's military accomplishments. So, she brought him up in a strict training regiment that fueled his spirit for military valor. Yet, this spirit was not attained without developing intense judgmentalism and scorn for those less accomplished in military matters. Act I of S's play presents Martius as an unexampled military leader, who almost singlehandedly turns over the enemy city of Corioli to the Romans. His achievement was crowned by the addition of an agnomen to his name: Coriolanus.

After achieving stunning military success in Act I, Coriolanus is feted by the patricians in Act II. The "natural" direction of his ambition "should be" to become consul, the highest political office in the land. That is what successful military people do. Yet he would rather just go back to fighting ("Know, good mother,/ I had rather be their servant in my way/ Than sway with thim in theirs"--II.i.202-204). Yet, to please his mother and the fulsomely flattering crowd, he decides to go along with their desire to make him consul.

One problem remains, however. He has to put on the white toga (the candidus--from which we get our word "candidate), which lets his battle wounds be exposed, and plead for the support of the plebians. He must go to them in this lowly garb and request their support. Though they may legally deny him the consulship, they are morally obligated to vote for him (one citizen says to the other, "We have power in ourselves to do it [i.e., deny him the consulship], but it is/ a power that we have no power to do," II.iii.4-5). After all, he has saved the Republic; the people's support is a kind of "rubber stamp" of patrician desires.

Soliciting plebian support is what you might call a "mere formality." All he has to do is simply ask them for their support--which they cannot reasonably deny him. But Coriolanus manages to mess up this job in a major way. He simply cannot stand the thought of "lowering himself" to "beg" approval from "lower class" people. He ends up treating them carelessly, with poorly-disguised scorn, and the people are incensed. This will eventually lead to Coriolanus' downfall, but that story is far beyond what I want to tell here.

Suffice it to say that Coriolanus, the one who outdistanced all others in valor on the battlefield, discovers that his skills are not only "non-transferable" to the political arena but they are positively harmful to him. He can't bluster the people into submission--they simply get offended and report their offense to the Tribunes (their representatives); he has to allow himself to answer their impertinent questions (what will you do for us?? or haven't you hated us, the little people, in the past??). He ends up self-destructing in this new arena, principally because the rules of political encounter are considerably different than those of military encounter. He has mastered the latter but has no clue on how to act in the former. And, the tragedy is that skills useful in one area of endeavor actually undo you in another crucial area of human life. He will be humiliated and so chagrined by popular rejection of his bid for consulship that he will end up betraying Rome.

Back to Roger the Rocket

There is no doubt that Roger Clemens mowed down opponents with the same kind of determination and mercilessness as Coriolanus. Instead of having his campaigns named after him, however, Clemens has been feted with an ever-growing chorus of supporters claiming that he is the "best pitcher of all time." Yet, those who have been skeptical of the claim that he accomplished this effort legitimately (i.e., without performance-enhancing supplements) need only point to his stats: they show an amazing turn-around in his performance, especially beginning in 1997. In fact, his performance in 1998, 2000 and 2001 was so good (you recall, his trainer said he injected Clemens with these supplements in those years) and his performance in 1999 (the year he was alleged to be "clean") not so good that there is a prima facie case from the stats alone that something was "up" here. I argued in my Barry Bonds essay that 1998-2001 were the years America was most "hyped" with growth; we wanted it in our athletes, too.

But Clemens now is in a different arena from the one in which he flourished. Now he has to answer charges and countercharges. Now he has to make a verbal, rather than a missile, case for himself. He still is up to his old tricks--trying to force the trainer through a lawsuit to back down--but I doubt this will work for him. For, he is in a new arena and he no longer controls the game. In fact, those bluster skills that worked so well for him on the mound will work against him in the public arena. But he, like Coriolanus, might be helpless to prevent his fall. Why? Because he, like Coriolanus, so despises all the rest of us...

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