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This was the scene behind closed doors one week ago today, shortly before Roger Clemens was acquitted on all charges he lied to Congress in denying he used performance-enhancing drugs to prolong his Cy Young Award-winning career.
“Before we went over for the verdict, we all joined hands for a brief moment and I just said a quick prayer and asked God to watch out for us,’’ Clemens’ older sister Janet Johnson told The Post in an emotional voice. “We thanked Him for the vindication He would give us and we were expecting and thanking him for standing by us the last 5 1/2 years, and we all said, ‘Amen’ and walked out the door.’’
Soon after, her brother walked out the door of the federal courthouse in Washington in peace.
“We’re not thumping our chests here, we are thrilled and we are blessed and we are so grateful to God and we are so grateful for the jurors’ time and attention to detail; we can never thank them enough,’’ Johnson said from her home in Texas. “They heard all the testimony and made their decision and it was by a landslide. They told [lead Clemens’ attorney Rusty] Hardin after the fact that they did not believe [Brian] McNamee, they thought he had a vendetta against Roger, they thought that the ‘evidence’ that [McNamee] brought in was complete hogwash. There were things in that beer can that he supposedly saved on Roger that couldn’t have been Roger’s, there was cotton ball that had 100 percent Brian McNamee’s DNA, his wife testified to the fact that that wasn’t the beer can that she saw when she supposedly opened the box, it went on and on.’’
Rocket’s sister then opened up on Goose Gossage, who criticized Clemens last week saying in an interview on ESPN Radio that Clemens was found innocent only because of “bad testimony’’ from McNamee.
“For people like Goose Gossage to run their mouth about something that they neither witnessed, nor took the time to read the testimony and then to say he thinks Roger is lying, that just disgusts me,’’ Johnson said. “I don’t have anything against Goose and I appreciate what he’s done as a pitcher, what I don’t appreciate is him popping off about something he knows absolutely nothing about. He wasn’t in that courtroom. He hasn’t lived this the past five years.
“I give Rusty a lot of credit because he is a great attorney, but basically all he did was put out there what we knew,’’ she said. “Roger did not get ‘off.’ Roger did not do what they accused him of doing.
“The bottom line is they chased my brother all over the world, went through bank statements for how many years back,’’ Johnson said. “He was offered a plea deal a few years ago, which we kept under wraps and didn’t tell anybody, but everybody is out there making their judgments. Roger was offered probation to plead that he used HGH and he said, ‘No, I’m not doing that because I didn’t do it.’ And he risked going to jail for it. Now, that is not somebody who is guilty, who is going to do that.
“Within the first 15 minutes of Brian McNamee’s testimony — and I was there — he admitted to lying on the stand [during the Congressional hearings] about the stuff that he said about the evidence and whatever, at least four times … Brian McNamee created his own non-credibility,’’ Johnson said. “We didn’t create it. … The jurors told us after the fact that they did not believe one word that came out of his mouth.
“For people to say we made our case on Brian McNamee’s credibility, well, what else did we have because you can’t prove a negative? There is no way for Roger to show or prove that he didn’t do something.’’
Johnson pointed out McNamee was hired by the Yankees as a bullpen coach in 1994. Her brother met him later when they were both with the Blue Jays.
“Roger had developed his workout years earlier, that workout wasn’t developed by McNamee,’’ Johnson said. “McNamee’s strength was that he had the ability to push Roger.
“All these things that we know about Brian McNamee now in his past, we had no idea about at the time it was going on,’’ she said. “Roger had no reason to suspect him of anything. And he had some reasonable expectations to believe people they put in these clubhouses had been vetted. Roger always tries to give someone the benefit of the doubt.
“Roger is very, very grateful that the jurors listened and paid attention to what was going on because they really did get everything that was trying to be said. They didn’t appreciate the way the government cross-examined [Clemens’ wife] Debbie.
“If you didn’t do something, wouldn’t you fight it?’’ Johnson asked. “If I had an inkling that Roger did (use steroids and HGH) I would have been the first one to advise him to say, ‘You did it and get it over with.’ It wasn’t worth what we went through for five years. I love my brother and I’m a defender of him, but I’m not an idiot and I don’t follow him blindly like a lot of people follow the press blindly.
“The first thing I did when all this came out was I downloaded every bit of it. I have at least eight binders full of every document, and I read every line in every single one of them because I started out looking to see if he was telling the truth,’’ Johnson said. “I tried to look at it from an objective point of view. We’re extremely close and if I thought he had done this I would have confronted him myself and tell him he needed to go out and say that he did it and get it over with.
“I was at his apartment in New York plenty of times — three, four, five days at a time,’’ Johnson continued. “I would have noticed something. If I had seen needles, and HGH and steroids anywhere — and I’ve been in his closets, in his drawers to pull out T-shirts to wear, all kinds of stuff, mailings, anything, I would have noticed it. I would have some inclination about it.
“We’ve always been really strong and I think it just comes from the fact that my mother was strong. She raised six kids basically by herself and she taught us the value of hard work. Be the best you can be no matter what your job is, do the best you can, and we’ve always run our life off that.’’
Janet then told this story about the time Clemens was in high school in Houston and ran home one day after practice:
“He didn’t have a car,’’ she said. “He would run back and forth between home and the field. He ran home one night, and the house was dark because we didn’t have the money to pay our electric bill. My mom was crying and he asked what was wrong, and she said ‘Honey, I don’t have the money to pay the electric bill and it’s going to be a week before I can get my next paycheck.’ He put his arms around her and said, ‘That’s OK, don’t cry mom because one of these days I’m going to make it big and you are never going to have to worry about anything again.’ That tells you something about what drives the man.’’
As for the Hall of Fame, Janet said her brother has never been overly concerned with Cooperstown.
“That’s something that’s never driven him,’’ she said. “He didn’t play to get in the Hall of Fame. He loved baseball from the time he was eight years old. When he was 8, he found out he couldn’t play on the Little League team until [he was] 9 and he had a fit that he could not be on the team. The kid was just determined.’’
Johnson said this about Andy Pettitte’s testimony: “People were under the misconception that he changed his story. If anybody would have read his deposition from the Congressional hearing they would have always seen that Andy wasn’t sure. For now to be coming out and beating up Andy because he changed his mind, that’s not right either because Andy didn’t change his mind. He was always unsure even from his Congressional deposition and for the media to come out after he testified in a courtroom and started flailing him around was wrong too.’’
Clemens still faces a defamation suit from McNamee in the Eastern District of New York.
“A lot of people would say, this situation might change Roger, but it’s not going to change who he is because he’s always looked for the best in everybody, to try to give them a pat on the back,’’ Johnson said.
She recalled a “Law & Order” episode that struck home with her.
“They said in the episode, ‘There’s no reason for you to convict someone of something because you don’t like him for what you perceive him to be.’ I think that’s what the point is with most of the court of public opinion. They don’t like Roger because he was dominating and aggressive on the field but that’s what he was getting paid to do and he tried to do it to the best of his ability. It was his job to protect that plate and because of that a lot of people on other teams didn’t like him. The battle of baseball is fought in your head. If you can get in somebody’s head where they are worried you might come inside on them or whatever, then it takes their edge away and that’s what the cat and mouse game of baseball is all about. It’s not about being fair. It’s about winning.’’
Bottom line: Roger Clemens won 354 games and the biggest case of his life.
kevin.kernan@nypost.com