As Baseball Braces for Report, Pettite and Clemens Cited

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DUFF WILSON
The New York Times
Published: December 14, 2007

A former trainer for Roger Clemens, winner of seven Cy Young Awards, provided information about Clemens's steroid use to investigators for former Senator George Mitchell, who will release a report Thursday on steroids in baseball, two lawyers familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

The trainer, Brian McNamee, also provided information about steroid use by pitcher Andy Pettite and first baseman David Segui, the lawyers said. McNamee spoke to Mitchell’s investigators under pressure from federal prosecutors investigating the use of steroids in baseball.

Mitchell is to release his 304-page report, covering 20 months of investigation, Thursday afternoon. More than 50 players are named in the report, according to individuals who saw the report.

Clemens had previously been suspected of steroid usage, but denied it. This report would be the first confirmation that McNamee provided testimony about Clemens.

Clemens and Pettitte helped lead the New York Yankees to one of the most dominant winning streaks in baseball. Pettitte pitched for the Yankees when they won three consecutive World Series from 1998 to 2000. In a conference call Wednesday to discuss his 2008 contract with the Yankees, Pettitte said that he was not working out with McNamee and did not know if McNamee had spoken to Mitchell’s investigators.

Clemens pitched for the Yankees from 1999 through 2003.

Clemens had a 40-39 record from 1993 through 1996 and was not re-signed by the Boston Red Sox. The next year, he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and began working out with McNamee.

Clemens had two of the best years in pitching history in 1997 and 1998, winning the Cy Young Award in both seasons and also led the league in wins, earned run average and strikeouts.

Clemens, who retired last season, has been considered one of the best pitchers in baseball history. Information and evidence from McNamee could raise questions about whether Clemens should be elected to the Hall of Fame.

More negative information about former Yankees is expected to be included in the Mitchell report, sources said.

Mitchell’s report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball will be highly critical of the commissioner’s office and the players’ union for tolerating the presence of drugs throughout years of abuse, a person who has read the closely guarded report said Wednesday.

Mitchell has been battling the union during his 20-month investigation, but sharp criticism of Commissioner Bud Selig, who hired Mitchell and is paying for his investigation, would be more unexpected and would seemingly prove Mitchell’s claim of independence in this endeavor.

Selig, the commissioner since 1992, and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players’ association since 1986, have scheduled separate news conferences after Mitchell holds a briefing. The three sessions will take place within blocks of one another in Midtown Manhattan.

Mitchell’s report will have substantial attachments, according to the person who read it. It will pull player names from three main sources: Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant who pleaded guilty to steroid offenses in April and says he supplied players with performance-enhancing drugs from 1995 to 2005; the Signature Pharmacy investigation led by the Albany County district attorney; and one other source that the person did not make clear. The bulk of the names are believed to be from Radomski.

Over all, Mitchell has interviewed scores of former players and club executives. But the report will state that there is a lot of information the investigation did not uncover, the person said, making it unlikely that baseball’s steroids issue will be put to rest.

That person and one other person familiar with Mitchell’s findings said the report would name more than 50 active and former major league players who are linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The person who read the report said among those named would be the winners of Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards.

The report is also expected to call for beefed-up testing, but it apparently does not address the use of amphetamines.

Baseball officials felt the report was harsh when they read it this week, the second person said. The sources were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the report.

The players’ association is expecting to be attacked for doing what it says was nothing more than what it was supposed to do: advising players of the harm that could come from talking to Mitchell. Partly as a result of that advice, only one current major league player, Jason Giambi, is known to have cooperated with the investigation, and then only after Selig threatened to suspend him for tacitly acknowledging steroid use.

A former prosecutor and United States senator, Mitchell was appointed by Selig to conduct the investigation in March 2006.

Informed Wednesday that the Mitchell report would pointedly criticize the commissioner’s office, Fay Vincent, Selig’s predecessor, said, “Very interesting.” In a telephone interview from Florida, Vincent declined further comment until he read the report. “I do have expectations, but I’m almost certain to be proven wrong,” he said.

Vincent had tried to crack down on steroids in his last year as the commissioner. In June 1991, he sent every major league club a memorandum saying all illegal drug use was “strictly prohibited” by law, “cannot be condoned or tolerated” and could result in discipline or expulsion. Vincent specifically highlighted steroids in the memo.

The next year, Selig became commissioner. Through the 1990s, even as newspapers reported that as many as one in five baseball players used steroids, Selig and the union played down the issue. “If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we were not aware of it,” Selig said in 1995.

In 2000, The New York Times reported steroids were rampant in baseball, but a baseball spokesman said they “have never been much of an issue.” In 2002, after a Sports Illustrated cover story said baseball “had become a pharmacological trade show,” the commissioner and the union finally agreed on a testing policy.

Random tests would be done in 2003 without penalties. If more than 5 percent of players failed the tests, penalties would be imposed starting in 2004, which is what happened. The penalty for a first offense was treatment, and for five violations, a one-year suspension. That policy failed to satisfy critics.

In 2005, as a congressional hearing was approaching, Selig and the union reopened the collective-bargaining agreement to toughen the penalties to start at a 10-day suspension and public identification of a first offender.

At the time, Selig cited a survey showing steroid use in baseball had fallen to 1 to 2 percent in 2004, compared with 5 to 7 percent in 2003.