So when we dismissed Joe Torre’s book as a “tell-some” yesterday? OK. That might have been a little premature. That was before we found out about this little gem, thanks to a source with a copy:

Donahue would then rub hot liniment all over [Roger] Clemens’ body. … Then Donahue would rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles. “He’d start snorting like a bull,” the trainer said. “That’s when he was ready to pitch.”

Oh my. My, oh my, oh my. Now this apparently happened before all his starts, but the specific incident in question was from Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, when Clemens hurled a broken bat at then-supposedly-gay Mike Piazza.

Who looks gay now, Mr. Other Men Rub Icy Hot On My Testicles?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just sayin’s all. With all the rear-end injections and testicle rubdowns Clemens was getting, it’s no wonder he had to lash out at a target like Piazza. I mean, what better cover-up than an old-fashioned feud with the guy who had to hold a press conference to announce his heterosexuality? Well, that and and an affair with a 15-year-old maniac country singer.

We will confess now that we once accidentally got some liniment on our testicles in seventh grade when we pulled a hip muscle playing football. Since that time, we’ve had countless injuries and developed a couple of serious medical conditions, and none of the pain has come anywhere close to what we endured that night in the bathroom with the tube of Atomic Balm.

At the risk of getting too detailed, it felt like Lucifer was rubbing sandpaper dipped in pure acid all over our bits and pieces, punching us repeatedly in the gut with sledgehammer fists while blowtorching our loins with fire made from molten knives. Excruciating.

We don’t throw the term “Kafkaesque” around liberally, but if you want to better understand existentialism, buy yourself some Ben-Gay and find a private place.

And this is something Roger Clemens chose to do before games. Freely. If you didn’t think he was crazy for the affairs or the steroids or the perjury or even all that nonsense about getting kicked out of his kid’s Little League games, you sure should now. Dude is blisteringly nuts.

Pun intended.