HOUSTON – Millions heard a shaken Brian McNamee plead with Roger Clemens to tell him what to do during a recorded phone conversation played yesterday – but in an article posted on Sports Illustrated’s Web site, a composed and, at times, angry McNamee stands by his story that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.
McNamee, in his first interview since the release of the Mitchell Report, did an interview with the magazine Sunday while watching Clemens’ interview on “60 Minutes.”
In a wide-ranging chat, the man who implicated Clemens in the Mitchell Report said the 45-year-old was a small fish in the steroid game.
“Within the culture of what was going on, he was just a small part of it,” McNamee told SI during the interview conducted at his one-bedroom bungalow near a Long Island beach.
“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.”
Asked how many major-leaguers were involved with steroids from 1998 to 2000, when he was a strength coach with the Blue Jays, McNamee said with hesitation, “More than half.”
Clemens was a member of the Blue Jays in 1998.
After hearing Clemens admit on “60 Minutes” that McNamee did inject the pitcher – but only with B-12 vitamins and the anesthetic lidocaine – McNamee told the magazine, “That’s news to me.”
McNamee also said he was not ready to go the route Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds’ trainer, has gone and go to prison rather than testify against his client.
“Faced with the situation I was faced with, I had no choice,” McNamee said. “I didn’t want to do it. I have a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old and I don’t want them taking steroids. I’m embarrassed. I wish I had nothing to do with it.”
During the phone conversation Clemens taped, Clemens asks McNamee why he did not tell him about Kirk Radomski. But McNamee said he could not tell anyone what he had told Mitchell because that was part of the deal.
“It was killing me,” he said.
“I got sick. I could not talk about it. It was a federal investigation.”
McNamee held out hope that Mitchell would not include his testimony in the final report.
“Why would I tell Roger or Andy something they might not even find out about?” he said.
Federal agents first contacted McNamee in May.
“I was pretty compelled to tell the truth,” he said. “It made me sick. I was hospitalized for the stress.”
In August, Mitchell called on McNamee. He was asked to nod to corroborate what he told the feds.
He said Mitchell hugged him when it was over.
“I made a mistake. And obviously, I paid for it tenfold,” McNamee said.