NEW ORLEANS – Working with Roger Clemens was the most important thing that ever happened to Brian McNamee. It opened doors for him. It exposed him to a lifestyle, and a life, that most of us only dream about. If he never got rich himself, he was able to taste an ever-so-fleeting sample of what it’s like.
He walked with kings. He worked out with princes. None of that would have been his if he’d stayed a cop, or an anonymous professor at St. John’s, or if he got $30 an hour working out grandmothers at the neighborhood Bally’s.
Remember that as you listen to the frail, terrified voice on that 17-minute tape Roger Clemens played for us yesterday. Factor that into the equation.
Clemens and his lawyer want you to believe that is the voice of a liar, of a guilty man, of a rat who was willing to sell out a friend for his freedom.
What I heard was the voice of a man who was given the keys to the kind of exclusive palace available only to the very rich and the very famous, who was actually allowed to call Roger Clemens “friend,” and has now had that all taken away from him.
Maybe it’s the voice of a man with a sick child and a ruined career, too, who at the very least dabbled in some highly illicit behavior and who now listens daily to his former friend lash out at him with venom in his voice and menace in his eyes.
Think of that as you listen to the pathetic sound bytes of a broken man, talking to the star he once idolized, who also happened to be one of the most intimidating athletes who ever walked onto a playing field. Think about how daunting it was to be Barry Bonds or Mike Piazza or Derek Jeter staring down Clemens. Now think of what it’s like to be Brian McNamee.
“I’m with you, I’m in your corner, I’d also like not to go to jail, too,” McNamee pleaded.
“All I did was what I thought was right,” McNamee whispered.
“Just let me know what you want me to do,” McNamee murmured.
“Everything I have to this day I have because of you,” McNamee sighed.
“I learned from you how to raise my kids.”
That’s a very different McNamee than the one who spoke to Sports Illustrated in November 2006, the one who said, almost defiantly, “I’ve been to his lake house with the jet skis, it’s nonstop moving. He’s got more energy than anybody I’ve ever seen. It’s a genetic thing. It’s analogous to the beautiful woman who stays beautiful throughout her life without cosmetic surgery.”
He sounds like a schoolgirl with a serious case of puppy love there; now he sounds like Carrie on prom night. Clemens was his meal ticket, his chance to be a Somebody. Now he’s been reduced to a pawn, the focus of Clemens’ desperate plan to rescue his reputation.
It would have been helpful for Clemens’ case if a smoking gun had surfaced in those 17 minutes of tape, a confession from McNamee. If you’re going to stoop to the slimy depths of recording a telephone conversation and then offer it up to the world as an audio version of the Zapruder film, it would be wise to have the goods first.
There are no goods here. There is a sad, scared man whimpering and whining, the regular-guy equivalent to getting buzzed under the chin with 97 mph gas. There is Clemens, ever the bully, trying to get McNamee to cleanse himself before he voids himself, and failing.
Brian McNamee is no hero. And he has done nothing heroic. Remember that, too. But neither has he been exposed as a liar. That makes him as dangerous to Clemens now as he was before this silly little charade of a press conference.
Clemens? Before he left the stage yesterday he bared his teeth and cursed on live TV and tried to treat the rest of America the way he treated Brian McNamee. And if McNamee didn’t break, even if he sounded as if he were about to break down, what chance did Clemens have against the rest of us?
We’re the ones with the clear consciences.