Roger Clemens held a press conference yesterday and played the tape of his conversation last week with the man who is accusing him of having used steroids:
In a bizarre news conference in which reporters in Houston and fans on television listened in suspense to a crackling 17-minute telephone call between Roger Clemens and his accusatory former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, no eureka moment emerged from the dissonance.
As Clemens repeatedly asked for “someone to tell the truth” about McNamee’s claims to federal and baseball investigators that he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs from 1998 through 2001, McNamee neither insisted he had been truthful nor indicated he had lied.
Seemingly seeking forgiveness from his longtime friend and employer, and anguished over his own legal troubles and what he described as his “dying” 10-year-old son, McNamee pleaded eight times, “What do you want me to do?” Clemens rarely responded by confronting McNamee, leaving the question of which side is telling the truth to linger, probably until the two appear before a Congressional committee Jan. 16.
The unlikely telephone conversation between the friends-turned-adversaries took place Friday because McNamee had text-messaged Clemens last week and indicated his son Brian was seriously ill, according to Clemens’s lawyer, Rusty Hardin. Clemens responded, opened the door for McNamee to call him and recorded the conversation on Hardin’s advice. The news conference Monday, which had been scheduled for more than a week to present Clemens’s response to McNamee’s allegations and their fallout, was largely centered on the playing of that tape.
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Perhaps the most notable remark McNamee made during the phone call with Clemens came when he referred to that arrangement: “All I did was what I thought was right,” McNamee said. “I never thought it was right, but I thought I had no choice.” McNamee did not indicate if his actions were not “right” because they were untruthful or because they implicated a friend. Clemens did not ask.
McNamee also contradicted himself when he said at one point, “I didn’t want this to happen — I’d also like to not go to jail,” but later said: “Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll go to jail. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Meanwhile, McNamee spoke to a reporter from Sports Illustrated:
Sitting on the couch of his bungalow by a Long Island beach, in an exclusive interview with Sports Illustrated, his first public words since the release of the Mitchell Report on Dec. 13, McNamee occasionally interjects as Mike Wallace interviews Clemens on 60 Minutes. At times he is even complimentary of his client-turned-combatant.
His mood darkens, however, when Wallace asks Clemens, “What did McNamee gain by lying?”
“Evidently not going to jail,” the pitcher replies.
“Jail time for what?” Wallace asks.
“Well, I think he’s been buying and movin’ steroids.”
“I’d rather be called a liar than a drug pusher,” McNamee says, his voice rising.
He gathers himself, then continues. “The feds look at bank accounts, and there’s no money unaccounted for. I don’t launder money. I don’t have anything in my mattress. If I was pushing drugs, what did I do with the money?”
As suddenly as the storm arrived, it passes. His eyes maneuver between his 23-inch television and a computer monitor that is providing minute-by-minute reviews of Clemens’ interview. The trainer reads aloud from e-mails that are supportive of him. He stops to hear Clemens acknowledge that McNamee did, in fact, inject him — only with the anesthetic lidocaine and B-12 vitamins rather than with HGH and anabolic steroids. “That’s news to me,” McNamee says. But the edge is gone now. He explains that such shots are administered through the arm and not the butt and implores Wallace to ask the pitcher where he got such prescription drugs. Wallace does not.
When Clemens claims to have no knowledge that Andy Pettitte — Clemens’ close friend and training partner, and another former client of McNamee — had twice taken HGH, thus corroborating McNamee’s testimony in the Mitchell Report, the trainer interjects, “I believe that.”
Frankly, I don’t know what to believe at this point.
