Andy Pettitte (AP)
ON TRIAL: Roger Clemens (right) and his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, leave the federal court house yesterday in Washington, where former teammate Andy Pettitte testified for the second straight day (AP)
WASHINGTON — A boy grows up in Louisiana and Texas, dreams of making the majors someday and maybe winning a World Series title or five. That’s ambitious enough, right?
Liberate a former friend in need? Doubtful that came up in young Andy Pettitte’s mind as he formulated his life goals.
Expose his country’s justice system as woefully incompetent? I’d have to say definitely not.
But that’s what the Yankees’ returning left-hander did Wednesday, submitting testimony so damaging to the U.S. government’s case against Roger Clemens — so conflicting with what the prosecutors hoped to get — that District Judge Reggie Walton seems to be seriously considering the defense’s motion to strike Pettitte’s relevant comments out of the case altogether.
“At this time, he is conflicted,” Walton said, of Pettitte, to U.S. Assistant Attorney Steven Durham. “He doesn’t know what Mr. Clemens said to him.”
Which sounds pretty similar to Clemens’ famous 2008 comment to Congress, the one we all mocked endlessly, that Pettitte “misremembered.”
The most important moment of this trial so far came when defense attorney Mike Attanasio brought up the purported conversation between Pettitte and Clemens during the 1999-2000 offseason. Pettitte testified on Monday that, in that exchange, Clemens revealed he used human growth hormone, something that — according to Pettitte — Clemens denied when Pettitte brought up the matter in March 2005.
Attanasio got Pettitte to agree on Monday this discussion was “passing” and “casual,” and Wednesday, Attanasio doubled down, asking Pettitte if he might have misunderstood Clemens in that conversation.
“I could have,” Pettitte responded.
To follow that, Attanasio proposed that it was “50-50” that Pettitte misunderstood Clemens in the conversation.
“Is that fair?” Attanasio asked.
“I’d say that’s fair,” Pettitte calmly responded.
The courtroom grew so quiet, you could hear government lawyers’ careers drop.
Durham tried to clean up the mess in his redirect examination; he at least extracted from Pettitte that he recalled no other topics of conversation from that day. Yet after Pettitte departed the premises, entering a black SUV and declining to answer reporters’ questions, Attanasio raised the issue of eliminating altogether Pettitte’s comments about the conversation in question. And Walton capitalized on this discussion to openly chide Durham.
When Durham argued that Pettitte’s “50-50” concession was “inconsistent with his recollection,” Walton told Durham, “That’s what I was waiting for you to ask [in redirect]. You never asked him.”
Eye yi yi. What a train wreck. Our tax dollars at (exceptionally poor) work.
We get it, right? Clemens’ 2008 denials were so brazen, so seemingly profoundly dishonest, that it felt like the government had to press charges. To not do so would be the equivalent of watching a man rob your home and letting him run away without pursuit.
But there’s a wide gulf between indictment and conviction, and in this case, right now, that gulf seems vaster than a solar system. Pettitte came here to prop up Brian McNamee, the prosecution’s shaky chief witness. Instead, he might have delivered a “Get out of Jail Free” card to Clemens, and now he can focus fully on his pitching comeback.
Other stuff you should know:
Pettitte did help the prosecution in a secondary matter. Clemens claims that McNamee injected him with lidocaine and B12, and that’s how McNamee has needles with Clemens’ DNA. During the redirect, Pettitte said that, despite his close relationship with McNamee, he never asked McNamee to inject him with anything because “He wasn’t someone who would do a B12 shot” and “With the Yankees, he wouldn’t have access to (painkillers).”
One astute juror asked Pettitte (through a written question) whether Clemens brought up McNamee’s name in that 1999 conversation. Judge Walton said that was irrelevant. The jury doesn’t know that Pettitte, allegedly like Clemens, acquired HGH with McNamee’s help.
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In general, Pettitte seemed slightly less miserable than he had Monday. He wore the same gray suit and gray-and-black striped tie for the second straight day; apparently, he had packed for just one day.
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FDA agent Jeff Novitzky, who gained notoriety for his role in the BALCO case with Barry Bonds, closed the day’s testimony by saying that he reached out to McNamee through Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant who was caught with extensive illegal performance-enhancing drugs, and sat with McNamee in multiple meetings as McNamee detailed his illegal PED involvement with Clemens, Pettitte and others. Novitzky also detailed how he obtained, and carefully handled, McNamee’s evidence of Clemens’ illegal PED usage.