INVESTIGATORS have the vials, the syringes and gauze pads allegedly containing Roger Clemens’ DNA. And Congress may have him by the same throat with which he squealed his innocence for five hours under oath on Tuesday.
Otherwise, why would lawyers for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have sworn in Clemens ahead of accuser Brian McNamee? Logically, wouldn’t the purported supplier be called upon to testify first, then Clemens next, to answer to McNamee’s testimony that he injected something more performance enhancing than Vitamin B-12 into the fabled Rocket?
Clemens looks snared, inevitably to lose his post-Mitchell Report sneer that won’t save him from perjury charges, perhaps a jail term, and an eternal place in the Hall of Shame in the back streets of Cooperstown with Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Pete Rose.
Of course, we all know what happens once lab reports come back positive. Besides the defamation lawsuit Clemens already has filed against McNamee, we mean. The accused continues to deny, deny, deny, claiming evidence tampering, vendettas, incompetence, whatever he wants to believe along with his own lie he has lived for so long.
A “B” sample miraculously saved Marion Jones for a few months. But the walls closed despite years of not only denials, but counterattacks against “the bad apples” in the media. These were some of the same persons Clemens said he couldn’t stand to look at last month when he and attorney Rusty Hardin ran a dog-and-pony show with that bizarre and ultimately meaningless audiotape of the pitchers’ conversation with a distressed McNamee.
Clemens, for fear of witness tampering, apparently was not allowed to answer McNamee’s repeated question of “what do you want me to do?” with “testify that you made it all up.” So that audio was nothing but a gunshot fired into the air around a burning house, one that has its own gym and a lot of trophies looking increasingly not worth the name that is engraved upon them.
For lying to lawyers for the committee, to be followed potentially by next week’s lying to the committee itself, Clemens could be looking at up to five years in jail, in addition to a lifetime and beyond of being a seven-time Cy Young Award winner not in the Hall of Fame.
Then again, neither will be the players who broke all-time season and career home run records, plus its all-time hit leader. As the Hall remains the game’s greatest honor, exclusion from it has become the game’s greatest shame.
“Brian McNamee is obviously a troubled man who is obsessed with doing everything possible to destroy Roger Clemens,” Clemens attorney Lanny Breuer said in a statement yesterday. “McNamee lied to the police who were investigating him for sexual assault. He lied to Sen. Mitchell. He lied to the federal government, and now he apparently has manufactured evidence.
“He has changed his story repeatedly on this matter. He claims to love Roger Clemens. He says he modeled being a father on Roger Clemens. He said Roger treated him like family. But he now claims he kept blood, gauze and needles from Roger Clemens for seven years. It defies all sensibility. It is just not credible. Who in their right mind does such a thing?”
Someone of a clear mind to protect themselves, that’s who. It is not crime to lie to reporters, like McNamee did to protect Clemens before he spilled the beans to George Mitchell under threat of indictment. It is a crime to lie to Congress.
The beauty of a sample is that it is not subject to an inadmissible polygraph examination, doesn’t have a convenient memory, doesn’t question motives.
It doesn’t make once-loyal friends such as Andy Pettitte or Brian McNamee tell the truth or risk indictment themselves. It just lays out the who, what, where and when, leaving Clemens to either tell the why next week to a congressional committee or risk going to prison.