Roy Halladay has responded on Twitter to allegations from Roger Clemens that he used amphetamines in the latest barb between the retired aces.
Halladay, who spent parts of 12 seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays, made headlines on Wednesday when he slammed Hall of Fame eligible players Clemens and Barry Bonds.
Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner who was teammates with Halladay for a short period in 1998, responded with a statement, as reported by Mark Berman of Fox.
Other than Clemens’ statement, Halladay has never been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. He didn’t fail a drug test during a 16-year career that included two Cy Young Awards and eight all-star appearances.
Matt Stairs, who played alongside Halladay in 2007 and part of 2008 with the Blue Jays, joined Dean Blundell & Co. Thursday morning and said he doesn’t have a problem with the right-hander voicing his opinion.
“Roy Halladay has the opportunity to say his two cents and he did,” Stairs said on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. “He always spoke his mind. I played with him, he’s a guy who worked extremely hard.”
On Wednesday Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were announced as the 2016 inductees to the Hall. Clemens and Bonds, both among the tainted superstars of the Steroids Era, are in their fourth year on the ballot and received 45 per cent and 44 per cent, respectively.
Stairs, a 19-year MLB veteran, said there’s no grey area when it comes to users of performance-enhancing drugs entering the Hall.
“If you’re going to try to beat the system, or go that way and take the steroids when they are illegal, there’s going to be consequences and (it’s) not going into the Hall of Fame,” he said.
Stairs also said he respects hitters such as Bonds and New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, but thinks their links to steroids will doom their chances of induction.
“Barry Bonds is probably the greatest power hitter of all time, he’s not going to make it,” Stairs said. “And as much as I hate to say, the idiot Alex Rodriguez, he probably deserves to be in as well if he wasn’t taking steroids.”
