Clemens trial isn’t waste of time

The commonly held opinion that the perjury trial of Roger Clemens is a waste of time, money and our legal system is both understandable and more than a little sad.

It’s an extremely important prosecution.

For starters, the obvious: Perjury — lying under oath, even if only to Congress — is a dead-serious charge/offense. Perjury should never be indulged, excused or rinsed away in we-have-better-things-to-do rationalizations. There are enough ethical compromises surrounding us without tossing perjury in the batch.

There is no “good time” to prosecute perjury just as there is no “good time” to commit it. That we’re bored with the Clemens story — also understandable — is not a good enough reason to suspend justice. Not every story can be as compelling as Snooki’s.

Next, Major League Baseball is a multibillion dollar business. If any business is corrupt, it should be exposed and punished as corrupt, especially the big ones. Roger Clemens was one of the biggest players in the baseball industry. If corrupt behavior played a role in his success, he should be prosecuted for lying under oath, for swearing that he was conducting business cleanly when he wasn’t.

Finally, and at the risk of coming off as drippy — as in sap — big league baseball, almost from the day we’re born, is an American apple core-value game and enterprise. Mom, apple pie and baseball — and not always in that order.

Baseball became drug and drug-money corrupted throughout the 1990s and beyond. That puppet commissioner Bud Selig chose to publicly ignore this fact while doing neglectful dirt to everyone before and during his tenure who played the game cleanly — without artificial power additives — is not one of those historical issues worth just a few vague paragraphs.

It’s a scandal — perhaps ongoing — that should be fully revealed and never forgotten or forgiven.

Selig, the team owners and Donald Fehr and dozens of members of Fehr’s MLBPA engaged in a lengthy conspiracy to mightily profit by corrupting The Game. As betrayals run, is there any worse than poisoning Baseball? Always remember that baseball’s highest authorities made suckers out of the clean players, put them at a career and financial disadvantage. Even the dead — Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, to name two — took a beating from MLB.

If we’re to look at Selig as the president/front of some crooked multibillion dollar national business, and Clemens as a regional big shot who pocketed money that otherwise would have benefited clean-living, on-the-job co-workers/schnooks — would we find Clemens’ prosecution to be a waste of resources?

Suit yourself. If you wish to dismiss the prosecution of Roger Clemens, charged with lying to Congress about performance-enhancing drug use within a multibillion dollar business — aka the National Pastime — as insignificant and inconsequential, I understand.

But I’d urge better from us. We should be angry — furious — that Baseball did this to us, that Baseball did this to Baseball. Has there ever been a worse money-based sports con, one that made fools of millions of Americans, ages 5-to-the-grave and beyond?

That we’re tired of the story should not mean that we’re indifferent to it. After all, a shrug of our shoulders might be interpreted by sports’ highest authorities as their latest “steal sign.”

Francesa’s always right about Mets, Yankees

Those Yankees and Mets sessions Mike Francesa has — well, starts — with Sweeny Murti and Ed Coleman, shortly will be renamed the “You’re Absolutely Right, Mike Report.”