Ed Wade to Roger Clemens: You're Tainted Goods...Too Tainted.

While perusing MLB Trade Rumors, I came across another one of those non-retirement-retirement statements from Roger Clemens as possible Hot Stove fodder.  Curious about the article and really wanting to put myself in a bind with completing a Money and Banking assignment that's due in 39 minutes at the time of this typing, I read through the article.  I'll include the quote about Roger's not really retiring, but retiring, though I'm leading with Ed Wade distancing himself from the fallen star:

Astros General Manager Ed Wade said utilizing Clemens right now as part of their training process is not on his radar.

"He has a huge amount of knowledge of the game, and at some point in time he will be able to lend that expertise," Wade said.     

"We have a full-time staff that works with our players and if you have confidence in your staff then you oughta let them do the job and not fragment the situation."

Reading that just made me laugh.  It's about the nicest way you can say to someone, "Listen, you're a great athlete who could be of extraordinary benefit to our young pitchers -- something we could desperately use right now -- but the fact that you paraded your lying, cheating, statutory-raping circus all over the nation's TV screens last winter has forced to say...thanks...but no thanks."  Roger Clemens might be one of the saddest examples of hubris I can think of -- unless Lance Armstrong is somehow definitely proven to have doped his way through seven Tour de France's.

To wrap it up as I now only have 35 minutes to finish this assignment, here's Roger's I'm retiring, but not really going to say it quote:

"Right now I don't have the desire to do so," Clemens said. "I'm enjoying what I'm doing, the number of things I'm doing around town, just enjoying that.

"I don't know if I will ever say no. I would have to know that I could perform at a high level and that my body would be able to hold up."

Give it up.