The Roger Clemens Institute for Sports Medicine at Houston’s Memorial Hermann Medical Center is about to become the Roger Clemens Memorial Hermann Sports Medical Institute. Yet it doesn’t want to give Roger Clemens his money back, and it seems to have a convincing case: if it did, doctors would violate their Hippocratic oath.

The move is a low-blow to the rocket, who continues to fight back ugly fallout from the Mitchell Report into steroids in baseball. While Clemens continues to proclaim his innocence of charges brought against him — with the government concurrently searching for ways to indict the former ace on perjury — the Houston hospital allegedly decided to pull his moniker from the center’s name, “to better reflect its commitment to all sports and athletes” and that “the move reflects the desire to promote the broad range of sports medicine services and programs offered by Memorial Hermann.”

That, friends, is a big, heaping pile of bull$h!+. Anyone who thinks pulling Clemens’ name from one of the best sources of subconscious goodwill he could have received isn’t an obvious public shaming is positively delusional.

Making matters worse, Clemens is losing his naming right at the center just a month after the organizers of a Houston charity golf tournament dissociated itself from Clemens, despite his four-year affiliation with the event at Shadow Hawk Golf Club, a period over which he raised millions of dollars for a variety of children’s health funds.

(The soon to be former Roger Clemens Institute for Sports Medicine.)

As for the money he donated to Memorial Hermann — reportedly a whopping $3 million for a pediatric wing at the medical center’s Children’s Hospital — the Houston center feels it shouldn’t have to refund Clemens’ donation because it would violate the Hippocratic Oath, which ensures doctors are always working in the best interest of their patients. That’s a valid point, except, of course, that the hospital is openly breaking a contract it had with Clemens. It may be a violation of the Hippocratic Oath to return the money to the former ace, but it’s a violation of contract law to keep it.

See the dilemmas steroids cause kids? Stay away from them. And if you can’t, at least make sure you don’t get an abscess on your ass.