COMMENTARY
Houston Chronicle
Pitching great Roger Clemens answers a question to answer allegations that he was injected with steroids by former trainer Brian McNamee as detailed in the Mitchell report to Major League Baseball, during a news conference held in Houston January 7, 2008. Clemens announced he would attend Congressional hearings and voluntarily answer allegations that he used banned substances during his baseball career.
REUTERS/Richard Carson (United States)
Was Brian McNamee asking Roger Clemens for money? That's certainly how it sounded.
How do you like your star witness now, George Mitchell? If Clemens had made an offer, would McNamee have changed his story?
He sounded desperate enough to do or say just about anything, telling Clemens he has no money, no job and a very sick son.
"All I did was what I thought was right," he says. "I never thought it was right, but I thought that I had no other choice, put it that way."
He doesn't sound like a man caught telling a lie. If he changes his story now, he's going directly to jail. But in the same conversation, he tells Clemens he's willing to do just that.
Without McNamee, there's no case against Clemens. On the best day Clemens has had since Mitchell's report on baseball and steroids was released almost four weeks ago, McNamee suddenly looked like a shaky witness.
"Whatever you can do to help," he tells Clemens at one point in that 17-minute telephone conversation attorney Rusty Hardin released Monday afternoon.
If that's not a request for money, it's pretty close.
It's important to note McNamee hasn't changed his story about injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone.
But he appears to have neither the stomach nor the money for a long fight with Clemens. He seems willing to negotiate.
"I need somebody to tell the truth, Mac," Clemens tells him. "I just don't know why you did it."
There's something akin to panic in McNamee's voice.
"What do you want me to do?" he asks Clemens. "I'll go to jail, I'll do whatever you want."
They sounded like two old friends at times, each telling the other he's sorry for what's happening. At other times, they sounded like two men on the edge.
"I want it to go away," McNamee says. "I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too. But it has nothing to do with you."
They're so civil that it's easy to forget each is responsible for the other's troubles.
McNamee tells Clemens he ratted him out only when threatened with jail time. Then he offers to go to jail if it will make things right.
"You treated me like family," McNamee says.
Clemens tells McNamee he wants the truth to come out, but never really presses him to admit that he made up the stories about steroids.
Hardin released the tape hoping reporters would notice how McNamee declines to say anything about Clemens using steroids and human growth hormone.
"You hear (Clemens) throughout saying, 'Tell the truth,' " Hardin said.
Hardin said it was telling that when Clemens urged McNamee to tell the truth, McNamee didn't respond: "I am telling the truth."
Clemens once more angrily denied using steroids or human growth hormone.
And he said he'd repeat those denials under oath next week to a congressional committee.
"I'm going to Congress, and I'm going to tell the truth," Clemens said.
No athlete has gone to such lengths to clear his name. Of course, no athlete has had so much to lose in terms of reputation or earning potential.
When it was over, nothing of substance had changed except maybe the tone of the debate. McNamee stuck to his previous statements that he injected Clemens between 16 and 21 times in the 1998, 2000 and 2001 seasons.
Speaking of those injections, if that's all Clemens is accused of doing, it's not much. I'm no expert on performance-enhancing drugs, but 21 injections over a four-year period don't exactly make Roger Clemens a steroid abuser.
"He took them in late July, August, and never for more than four to six weeks max," McNamee told Sports Illustrated. "Within the culture of what was going on, he was just a small part of it. A lot of guys did it. You can't take away the work Roger did. You can't take away the fact that he worked out as hard as anybody."
Clemens stormed out of the news conference in which his rage bubbled near the surface. At one point, Hardin passed him a note that said: "Lighten up."
But he was in no mood to lighten up. This is the fight of his life.
"How I can I prove a negative?" he said.
He admitted some people will always believe he did what he's accused of doing. For the first time, though, he seemed to turn things in his direction. He told his story with emotion to reporters and said he'll do it again under oath.
Unless there's a paper trail, it's going to come down to one man's word against another man's word.
Clemens doesn't seem worried about more evidence surfacing. For the first time, he looks like a man who believes in his fight.
richard.justice@chron.com
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