For Clemens and Others, Their Lies Are The Truth

Now Roger Clemens and Jeremy Mayfield are among the latest to suggest that we should view their (ahem) alleged transgressions through the words of that old song.

"Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Then again, maybe we've gotten it all wrong. Maybe we've missed the point regarding Clemens' fervent denials that he used performing enhancing drugs despite his former trainer claiming he can prove otherwise with a bunch of syringes containing the pitcher's DNA. I mean, Clemens looks and sounds convincing. The same goes for Mayfield, who swears he never took illicit drugs despite the evidence of the toxicologist in charge of NASCAR's testing program.

The same goes for Pete Rose, who only recently stopped saying he never bet on baseball despite the FBI finding his fingerprints on betting slips.

The same goes for O.J. Simpson, who, well, you know.

Let's just say the list is infinite involving sports personalities seeking to convince us that up is down, green is red and ice is hot. Thus a revelation: Maybe, just maybe they actually believe their lies. After all, they were highly proficient in their area of athletics, or they still are. That means they've spent the bulk of their lifetimes training not only their bodies but their minds to perform at an incredible level for long stretches. They've willed themselves to prominence.

So, when they mess up in a dramatic and public way, they start by knowing the truth, but then they flip enough switches in their minds over time to become so efficient at perpetuating the myth that they could pass a lie detector test.

That's my theory, but my degree from Miami (Ohio) University was in economics instead of psychology. So take it from Dr. Patrick Devine, a former Atlanta Braves psychologist, who has spent the last three decades as an accomplished professor in the psychology department at Kennesaw State University.

"You bring up some good points," Dr. Devine said. "Could some of these guys have gotten to the stage where they've blocked things out of their minds, and now they believe that they didn't do them? Well, Sigmund Freud would say, yes, you can repress those thoughts. There's always the possibility that you can take bad thoughts and actions and shove them into your subconscious and make them not a part of your conscious awareness. That's especially true in cases like these involving great players, where you've got a lot riding on the outcome. You've got your legacy and the Hall of Fame involved in some cases, so the tendency is denial, denial, denial."

Sound familiar?

Just plug in a name. Any name, but Marion Jones will do at this point. After years of angry denials that she used steroids to pump extra juice into her legs for those five gold medals during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, she confessed. This was after she kept lying to everybody, including to two grand juries.


The point is, Jones almost believed her lie, but her conscious got in the way. Such a thing hasn't happened to Barry Bonds or Floyd Landis, both accused of knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs and both claiming their innocence. That means they both either are the most unjustly persecuted athletes of our time, or they both are seeking to join Alice in Wonderland.

Or they both actually believe their lies.

"The seasoned guys, like what we're talking about here, such as a Roger Clemens and others -- yeah, they've trained themselves to block out the negative and to emphasize the positive in all situations," Dr. Devine said. "You walk a guy, and then you have to look at the next batter as if this is going to be a strikeout. I'm just talking in generalities, because I'm obviously not involved with any of these situations. But when you can push things out of your mind to this extent, it puts you more into the possibility of saying, 'Well, what I did was really OK.' In the case of performance-enhancing drug use, for instance, it starts to become like, 'Well, everybody else is doing it.' So it makes it easier to deny usage over time, especially if you get caught."

The key phrase is "if you get caught." Those who don't will live with their lie forever, which only makes sense.

To them, the statute of limitations on a lie is never.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.