DenisHorgan.com

Like Roger Clemens, I apologize.

Like Roger, I offer a generic, one-size-fits-all apology and allow you to fill in the details to your own satisfaction. Or predilections.

If you want to think me guilty of arson or mayhem, jaywalking or expectorating, I apologize. If you guage me a blasphemer, pickpocket, mountebank, slacker, stumblebum, corner-cutter, procrastinator, anticrastinator, carouser, drug-addled tippler, toppler, tappler or winker, I apologize. Take your pick.

Actually my brilliant, stunning, dazzling book, “Flotsam: A Life in Debris,” has a chapter on apologies. And, while I apologize for the exuberant self-praise and then apologize again for the transparently bogus modesty, I recommend it.

Clemens’ apology is a Jason Giambi mu mu sort of thing, craftily manufactured to appear to cover all conditions and offenses while leaving it to the poor victim to determine what in blazes the apology might be for, out of so many opportunities.  (Giambi, an outsized hypocrite perfectly crafted for Big Apple work, has bloated his body and statistics, cheating with artificial substances and chemcials, and apologizes for doing things, which could only be steroids or HGH. But he declines to be specific. Then, to demonstrate that he has a sense of humor on steroids, he demands that Major League Baseball apologize because there has been steroids in the game — in the pluperfect forms of such as, well, Jason Giambi. What a fraud.) 

Politicians should glom onto this version. At the beginning of a campaign the candidate need only say, “I apologize for everything I’ve done wrong but for legal/family/whatever reasons I cannot go into details. Trust me, the apologizer.” Thereafter everything that he or she gets caught at can be fobbed off to the apology.

This is a distinct improvement, and time-saver, over the standard fare: Apologies that are phantoms, mirages, apologies that do not actually apologize. It is the common form to say, “I apologize if anyone’s feelings were hurt by my behavior or if anyone should take offense at my remarks.” Not that the person is apologizing for doing something but, in fact, apologizes for the victim’s response. The scoundrel is not saying, “I did the wrong thing.” She or he is saying, “I am sorry that you caught me doing the wrong thing.” Not the same.

Ah, but the baseball players have the better approach. The grand slam apology with no specifics, no details, no remorse, no consequence.

What a great game they play.