If Roger Clemens doesn’t have a pickup truck and a hound dog, he needs to get them immediately. His life has become a bad country song that got worse when that didn’t seem possible. He is traveling 50 miles of bad road on bald tires.

It’s getting to the point where we need a scorecard to keep track of Roger’s problems.

The feds think he lied under oath to Congress, which could get him a room with bars and a view of the exercise yard if that is proven. He won’t have to worry about which team to pitch for this summer, although it’s starting to look like he might need sharpen some other skills (like working in the laundry, maybe).

While that’s going on, he now has to deal with what the New York Daily News called a “tearful but resolute” Mindy McCready, the country singer whose own past is so checkered it could be a chess board. The Daily News reported over the weekend that Clemens had an affair with McCready, who said in a follow-up story that basically those are the facts.

Oh, she was 15 years old when they met, supposedly on karaoke night at a Fort Myers bar. Roger was married with two kids. Not sure how that corresponds to the time line when Roger’s wife, Debbie, admitted to trying HGH.

This matters because Roger is suing Brian McNamee for defamation of character for saying Clemens was a steroid user. McCready could wind up being called to court to testify that Roger has no character to defame.

Let’s review to see if we have the necessary elements for a country song: We’ve got a man (allegedly) done wrong. We’ve got (alleged) infidelity. We’ve got a tearful (allegedly) “other” woman. We’ve got the cops (well, the feds) and we might have prison.

Stories like this will keep newspapers alive forever - at least the tabloids.

Here’s another twist to that saga from The Boston Herald.
Warning: You may need a shower after reading all this.