When the Rocket testified a couple of years ago before the House Committee on Governance, in-person observers were suspicious of his credibility. Boston fans were suspicious before that; after four very mediocre years at the end of his Sox career, Roger went on to forge a spectacular coda to his 192 Boston wins.

And it is hard to believe that a disgusting bag of blood and drugs did not prove his sins, although perhaps any person we believe capable of saving that bag could perhaps be capable of concocting it from unrelated elements.

Along comes a much-reviled prosecutor who presents hearsay evidence, on film no less, which the judge believes is prejudicial to the point of mistrial. We don’t have the benefit of a transcript and, well, it would take a bunch of lawyers to figure out whether the judge was correct or just didn’t want this tawdry but fundamentally irrelevant procedure on his docket. What we do know is, in common baseball and legal parlance, that Roger walked.

We now await early September when the judge decides if a retrial is even possible, while Rocket’s counsel ponders double jeopardy as a defense. If an impartial jury could have been found for the first trial, it is hard to understand why an impartial jury could not be found for a second; after all, the jury pool will not include anyone present at the first trial who viewed the offending film. If Rocket’s case was sufficiently non-topical before that a dozen people could honestly say they were fundamentally clueless, surely another dozen can be found who missed the Rocket’s red glare in the heat and blazing sun of their summer vacations.

We are left to ponder why the House of Representatives stuck their noses into baseball steroids in the first place. Today we have proof positive, on Capital Hill, that there were more important things going on in American governance and economics than worrying whether baseball players were shooting up. It may be that baseball is America’s game, but it is alas only a game.