As I write this, ESPN is crawling across the bottom of the screen of the Yankees/Indians game that the New York Daily News is reporting Roger Clemens participated in a decade-long affair with country singer Mindy Mcready.  That being stated, this post is not about Roger Clemens.

During this same broadcast, analyst Orel Hershiser was talking about the huge difference with the technology available today in how players and teams prepare themselves for games.  He explained that digital media has made it possible (and he believes every major league team does this) to record on video every single pitch of every major league game.

I find the comments by Hershiser far more thought provoking than the alleged extra-curricular activities of the Rocket.  Yet, the very same advances in technology that allow today’s player to have such a complete visual scouting report of opposing pitchers and hitters may also be partly responsible for the fact the Clemens report is a story at all.

The fact is Clemens may or may not have had an affair.  I personally don’t care.  But I would be willing to bet if Clemens played 20 years, 10 years or maybe even just 5 years earlier than he did, this wouldn’t be a story.  Just think about all the unsavory things that so many players before him must have done that we will never know about.  The explosion of today’s instant communication age means it is possible for us to know a whole lot more about everyone–not just major league baseball players–than we could have even just a couple of years ago.

And so I just found it to be ironic listening to Hershiser talk about the very positive effects of technology while simultaneously seeing perhaps the very negative effects of that same technology on a former major leaguer’s life.

Oh, by the way, Mindy Mcready’s only number one hit was back in 1996 titled, ironically, “Guys Do It All the Time.”–vk

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