Baseball’s Roger Clemens has never been one to back down and go easy on batters.

So it’s no surprise that he has launched a very public campaign to clear his name of allegations leveled against him in the Mitchell report on the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

And it’s also not surprising that Rusty Hardin, a Houston-based criminal defense lawyer, is representing Clemens.

Sportswriters have long lamented the fickleness of sports stars, those ingrates whose loyalty can be bought by the highest bidder.

But 2007 was also a year when high-profile writers (and some announcers) did some job jumping themselves.

Connections can be good, but they can also become conflicts of interest.

Former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell released his report Thursday on the illegal use of steroids and other performances enhancing substances by Major League Baseball players.

Mitchell, 74, is widely respected, the sort of statesman who’s called in to fix problems others can’t solve. But he also has past and current links to baseball, including his role as director of the Boston Red Sox.

Barry Bonds struck out on his first attempt to hire a high-powered lawyer to defend him against federal perjury charges.

Negotiations broke down between the home run king and John Keker, a celebrated criminal defense attorney. Reports were that Bonds was put off by Keker’s fee — said to be $900 an hour — and other issues.

But Bonds stepped up to the plate again, and by the end of last week he had assembled a solid defense team of experienced lawyers.

Two major informants play central roles in the searing report on steroid use in baseball, released yesterday by former Sen. George Mitchell.

Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant, and Brian McNamee, a former strength trainer for the Yankees and Blue Jays, provided much of the information linking players to drug use. The document named 89 players, including superstars Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Jason Giambi.

Pity the poor billionaire.

You start with nothing, make a fortune, give away millions.

Then what happens?

If you own a baseball team, sports columnists call you cheap. That’s right, cheap.

Carl R. Pohlad, the 114th richest person in American at $3.1 billion on the Forbes Magazine list, knows this all too well.

Baseball’s Barry Bonds would seem like a man in need of a really good lawyer, but he’s proving somewhat frugal, perhaps too frugal.

According to news reports, Bonds, who was indicted Friday on charges of lying to grand jury about steroid use, suffered from sticker shock at the $900 per hour fee charged by John W. Keker, a San Francisco defense attorney who has been involved in several high-profile cases.

“Image is everything,” a shaggy-haired Andre Agassi proclaimed as he hawked Canon cameras as a teenager.

Over the next 20 years, the tennis superstar traded handsomely on his world-famous name and image, earning an estimated $200 million through deals with Nike, Adidas, Head, Genworth Financial, Aramis and American Express, among others.

When it comes to Rudy Giuliani’s effort to win the Nascar vote, the national press corps just can’t resist stereotypes.

The latest sample comes from today’s Washington Post: “On Sunday, the Giuliani campaign came to the Homestead-Miami Speedway, past a handful of Confederate flags flying in the parking lot and beyond the Jack Daniel’s tent, to attend NASCAR’s Ford 400.”

There’s so much more to this picture than fast cars, bourbon and the Southern Cross.

Talk about a firm for all seasons.

We’ve already shown that investment bank Goldman Sachs is a power in politics and in finance, sending its executives off to presidential cabinets and elective offices and to lead other companies.

And now there’s proof that Goldman can hit home runs in baseball as well.

Word is out that two of Goldman’s managing directors, John Mallory and Gerald J. Cardinale, helped bring the New York Yankees and superstar Alex “A Rod” Rodriguez back into contract talks.

It would seem they did what Scott Boras, Rodriguez’s agent and one of the most powerful and vilified men in sports, couldn’t do. Though, rest assured, Boras will make money on this deal.

Like any sport, baseball needs its villains.

And right now, there’s no better villain than Scott Boras, the California-based sports agent who has the audacity to seek and get really, really good contracts for his millionaire clients.

Boras, 55, is so hateful, it would seem, that he will even upstage the World Series.

Baseball has been very good to Joe Torre, but would he have been better off managing another sport?

A look at the numbers suggests that Torre, who yesterday signed a $13.5 million contract to manage the Los Angeles Dodgers for three years, might have done better on another sideline.

Granted $4.5 million a year isn’t bad, even if it’s a drop from the $7.5 million a year he got from the Yankees for 2007.

English football teams are the latest craze for U.S. sports tycoons.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, in the United Kingdom for the NFL game in London last weekend between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins, says he is interested in buying a Premier League soccer – oops, football – team. He already owns Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution.

“We looked seriously at Liverpool,” he told Sky Sports News on Thursday, unwilling to disclose which team he wants to buy. “We still do have an interest in playing in the Premier League. We’d like to close our deal and then talk about it.”

As the chairman of Madison Square Garden, the company that owns the hapless New York Knicks, James L. Dolan should have already known a lot about losing.

But Dolan, 51, who is also a blues/rock singer, has learned even more about embarrassing defeats during the last few weeks.

When Curt Schilling takes to the mound in the American League
Championship series, he’ll be pitching for the Boston Red Sox against
the Cleveland Indians.

Off the field, Schilling is one of a relatively small group of baseball players who are willing to pitch for political candidates.

He campaigned for President Bush in 2004, and earlier this year, he
said he was backing Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the 2008
Republican presidential nomination. However, he added that if Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois were the Democratic candidate he would have a hard time choosing between the two men.