WASHINGTON – If we lived in a perfect world, then the biggest winner this morning would be the truth. If we lived in a perfect world, then by the time the doors swing open in Room 2154 of the Rayburn Building this afternoon, ending baseball’s latest trip to Capitol Hill, we would have a certified winner and a certified loser.
Brian McNamee or Roger Clemens?
One would win. One would lose. One would wear the tag of truth-teller. One would bear the burden of public perjurer.
We won’t be getting that today, of course, and the chances are we won’t ever get that. The truth? Oh, we’ll get various versions of the truth, the way we’ve gotten them in an endless spigot flow across the past few months. McNamee will tell us his interpretation. Clemens will tell us his. Unless something very strange happens, these will bear little resemblance to each other.
Which means the one thing we will know for sure is this: someone has lied. And someone has told the truth. We just don’t know for sure who is who and which is which. And won’t know for now. Maybe won’t know forever.
It doesn’t make the morning’s proceedings any less compelling, or any less hypnotizing. McNamee and Clemens will be well-dressed, well-coiffed boxers, pugilists in jackets and ties, looking to bloody each other to a pulp, finishing off what each has already done to the other. It won’t be pretty but, then, we don’t want it to be, do we?
If we can’t get closure, we can always hope for chaos.
And there will be plenty of that today, capping a season of sinister cynicism that began the moment the Mitchell Report was released and contained the biggest fish in the lake: the name of William Roger Clemens, served up by McNamee, his former trainer, former friend, and reputed former supplier of the kind of juice you don’t normally find hidden in citrus fruits.
After weeks of secretly-taped phone conversations and recently-unearthed physical evidence; weeks of lawyerly back-and-forth that are equal parts nauseating and Neanderthal; weeks of he-said/he-said bickering whose collateral damage has already included one son (McNamee’s) and one wife (Clemens’), we will finally see the two of them in the same room, sitting at the same table, breathing the same musty air.
After enduring what we’ve endured since December, after listening to all of it, we are entitled to that much.
Especially since that’s all we’re likely to get.
In a perfect world – hell, in the sports world – there would be a winner and a loser today, even if it took overtime, extra innings, shoot-outs and corner kicks to determine one. But there is nothing perfect about this world, or about this story, no matter how the script plays itself out today. There are no heroes to root for. There is no feel-good storyline to embrace.
In one corner, on one side of the table, there is a legendary Hall-of- Fame caliber hurler who, to be fair, is in something of a tight spot, despite all the electioneering he has done the past few days. Clemens is not only fighting his career-long reputation for being a sneering bully, and he is not only fighting whatever his old buddy Andy Pettitte may or may not have said during his deposition; he is also fighting George Mitchell, a sainted figure on Capitol Hill, already on the record saying he believes every word that was in his report.
In the other corner? We have the ex-cop, ex-professor, ex-trainer, ex-steroid fiend, McNamee, who would be just another name in the Breezy Point phone book if not for latching his fortune to Clemens’ burnt-orange starship a decade ago. Yesterday, a guy who’s known McNamee for years described him thusly: “He’s just a guy like me. He’s just a guy like you. Who made some pretty bad decisions along the way.”
Those decisions, ultimately, led everyone to Room 2154 today. Those decisions, ultimately, will leave everyone with an empty feeling today, unless something completely unexpected happens. They used to say a tie was like kissing your sister. For the day, it will feel like shooting her up with lidocaine. Or B-12. Or HGH. Or Winstrol.
Plenty surreal. But ultimately unsatisfying.