Gammons: 'Terrible job' by prosecution

Hall of Fame baseball analyst Peter Gammons joined Mut & Merloni Thursday to talk about the Roger Clemens mistrial, the All-Star Game and the latest with the Red Sox.

He said he is surprised with Thursday’s developments that the trial has been declared a mistrial. 
“I think it was a major surprise,” Gammons said. “A friend of mine who had been covering it, sent me an email saying the prosecution just blew its self up. They did a terrible job with it. It’s amazing. Rusty Hardin didn’t even need to pull the guns out, he was ready to go after Andy Pettitte and all sorts of people.”

Added Gammons: “A lot of people seeing Clemens and [Barry] Bonds get hung on all this, but just go ‘alright enough is enough lets move on.’ I sense that they had done that in San Francisco. I thought this trial would be a solaces and vicious trial. The fact that they were bringing Pettitte into it and the fact the prosecutors screwed it up on day one. You would laugh if they didn’t realize how much money they spent on this.”

Gammons also discussed the All-Star game and how many people within the game were upset with players leaving the game early, or not showing up at all.


“It was bad for the game,” Gammons said. “I know the commissioner’s office was pretty upset with the way all this went down. So many players were out of there by the eighth inning and on their planes going home. I think most people, I know Bud [Selig]  is upset about it and he should be, were left with the impression it doesn’t really matter.
“

That is a tough thing for baseball to overcome. I am told that there were some words between the commissioner’s office and the players association, that the players association is supposed to think everybody was hurt, but at the same time it did have that impression of  ‘OK, lets get this over with and see what happens.’”

Clay Buchholz is one of the three Red Sox pitchers on the disabled list. He has an injured back. Gammons sees this weekend and an important weekend for him, as well as the Red Sox starting rotation.

“I think we will find out a lot this weekend,” Gammons said. “A muscular problem they tell us it is nothing, but he is such a wired athlete and he has a great body, but it is very tight. I am worried about that muscle in there. They are telling him it wouldn’t bother him when he just threw, but it would bother him when he went into the stretch and things like that. It is a concern. Anytime when you have three pitchers of that level, All-Star pitchers and each one of them has something physically something wrong with them.”

Gammons then touched on another injured Red Sox starter, Josh Beckett. He noted how Beckett never gives any indication of an injury, and how important Beckett is to the staff.

“We all know Josh Beckett will never tell you if he is hurt,” he said. “We know now that between something on mound and pitching BP that he was never right last year. He could never get the ball down in the strike zone. He never complained about it, he never complained he was hurt in 2008. He said it is nothing, but we will have to see. If he doesn’t get the ball down in the strike zone like he has in the first half of the season then maybe it is a problem.”

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