TELL ME I WAS DREAMING

Oh, wait. That's Travis Tritt.

Hey, if you've heard one crappy country song, you've heard them all, right?

Anyway, imagine the horror when I got to work this morning and read this:

Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready, a romance that began when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar and Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, several sources have told the Daily News.

Emphasis mine.

Yeah. Oh, and it gets worse. Or better, if you really don't like Roger Clemens and want to see him go down in flames (figuratively, of course).

Sources say that when McCready, now 32, and Clemens were together, there was barely any friction between them. The two were known to take lavish trips to Las Vegas and New York. One time, McCready attended a Yankees game at the Stadium and jokingly donned a catcher's mask near the home dugout. During another Big Apple excursion, the two holed up in the trendy SoHo Grand and later partied with Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jordan. McCready, according to a source, even bummed a cigar off His Airness to give to Clemens. There were personal love missives to Clemens hidden in McCready's album liner notes.

That's almost too good to be true.

Hey, at least McCready didn't bum the cigar off Monica. Then we'd have some jokes to tell, wouldn't we?

Listen, I'm not one of these guys who jumps all over famous people that sleep around. It's reprehensible, but it's their poor choice to make, and it's not my job to judge. That's not to justify or endorse the behavior, but we aren't going to do anything to stop it.

However, if this report is true, you have a professional athlete running around with a 15-year-old girl. Not good in any way. Statute of limitations or not, this is a major issue.

If the report isn't true, and Clemens' attorney was truthful in saying they were "just friends", I think we still have an issue. Hats off to Will Brinson for nailing this part of it:

And I am sorry, but we don't living in a world anymore where it's okay to assume that any relationship between a 15 year old girl and a 28 year old man is platonic. And even if it is, it is still inappropriate, particularly if that relationship involves trips to Las Vegas and sundry parties with celebrities.

That'll be the end of today's foray into the private lives of idiot professional athletes.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the utter stupidity of the Family Cyrus. You're the father of a 15-year-old girl who is (literally) worth a billion dollars. She takes part in a photo shoot for a magazine article. You let her pose rather, um, provocatively, and you let the photo get published.

Miley Cyrus is taking issue with a photo of herself that's going around, and it's not another amateur, truth-or-dare Internet snapshot—it's the handiwork of Annie Leibovitz.

The photos, appearing in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, were taken by Leibovitz, a renowned celebrity photographer whose edgy, silver- toned portraits have included subjects such as Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson and a naked, pregnant Demi Moore.

"I'm sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted," Leibovitz said in a statement released by Vanity Fair. "Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful."

The Cyrus pictures accompany an interview with the 15-year-old pop star and her father, singer Billy Ray Cyrus. One photo in particular is causing the biggest stir: the teen idol is wrapped in what appears to be a satin bedsheet, looking over her shoulder with her back exposed.

Seriously, could you be any dumber?