Back in the 1990s Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay played on the Toronto Blue Jays together but if they shared any feelings of camaraderie back then that appears gone with Wednesday’s exchange witnessing Halladay attacking Clemens for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).
With the topic of new nominees to the Hall of Fame once again in the news, former Blue Jays pitcher Halladay jumped to his Twitter account to proclaim that neither Clemens nor Barry Bonds should ever win election to the Baseball Hall of Fame because of accusations that they used PEDs.
On Wednesday morning, Halladay slammed the two players on Twitter.
Of course, abuse of PEDs has been a long standing accusation hanging over the heads of both Bonds and Clemens despite that neither player ever failed an MLB-administered drug test. As for Clemens, former trainer Brian McNamee swore that he injected Clemens with a anabolic steroids. While Clemens always denied the charge, he was indicted by a grand jury for perjury. Still, when it was all over he was eventually acquitted of all charges.
In any case, once the voting for this year’s inductees to the Hall was over, Clemens chose to respond to Halladay’s Twitter attack saying that he had “distanced” himself from the topic of his inclusion in the Hall of Fame. But after thanking the voters he took aim at Halladay accusing him of having problems of his own.
The charge is interesting because, as NBC Sports notes, there has been no known accusation that Halladay ever used illicit drugs.
For his part, Halladay had one more Twitter come back in store for Clemens.
Clemens, though, still has time to make the grade to be inducted into the Hall Of Fame. The seven-time Cy Young award winner has another six years remaining on the Hall of Fame ballot and this year’s 45.2% vote total ranks as his best yet. Having retired in 2013, Halladay will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2019.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com