The Wall Street Journal-20080213-Mr- Clemens Goes to Washington
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Mr. Clemens Goes to Washington
Full Text (1072 words)And then there were two. Well, three, actually, if you count Charlie Scheeler, a former member of Sen. George Mitchell's staff. The senator's December report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball ignited a firestorm of controversy in the sports world that has spread all the way to Capitol Hill. But the long- awaited testimony in today's public hearing before the House Committee of Oversight and Reform will not be Mr. Scheeler's. It will come from Roger Clemens, the seven-time Cy Young Award winner, who claims he never used performance-enhancing drugs, and from his accuser and former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, who claims to have injected Mr. Clemens with performance enhancers over a three-year period.
It's hard to imagine the stakes being any higher for everyone involved. At this point, it seems that either Mr. Clemens or Mr. McNamee is guilty of perjury and will face an investigation by federal authorities and, almost certainly, an indictment. And they aren't the only ones with much to lose. The biggest name in Sen. Mitchell's two- year investigation -- the only superstar -- is Roger Clemens, and if he should somehow succeed in proving that the allegations made against him by Mr. McNamee are false, the Mitchell report would lose much of its impact.
That could then backfire on MLB and its commissioner, Bud Selig, who chose Sen. Mitchell and funded his report in order, many believe, to placate congressional critics of MLB's exemption from antitrust laws. (The removal of this exemption could destroy baseball's status as a self-governing body.) And a vindication of Mr. Clemens could damage the reputation of the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), a close friend and supporter of Sen. Mitchell.
In a story that is furnishing the media with headlines on an almost- daily basis, the committee announced late Monday that Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, former Yankees infielder Chuck Knoblauch, and former clubhouse attendant and convicted drug distributor Kirk Radomski will not be testifying at today's public hearing as originally scheduled. According to a statement issued by Rep. Waxman and the committee's ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Davis (R., Va.), "Mr. Knoblauch and Mr. Pettitte answered all the committee's questions, and their testimony at the hearing is not needed."
No one really thought that Mr. Knoblauch, a 12-year major league veteran, had anything to add to the proceedings. But the absence of Mr. Pettitte, Mr. Clemens's close friend and former teammate, from the hearing unleashed a blizzard of speculation.
The first wave of reports early Tuesday morning indicated that Mr. Pettitte would not appear because he couldn't bear to face his friend after apparently giving damaging testimony in his deposition. Shortly after the first reports, though, unnamed sources told an ESPN reporter: "Pettitte was not a good witness when he appeared before congressional lawyers during a sworn deposition. . . . Pettite often contradicted himself, so the committee agreed to his request not to appear before the committee."
Rep. Davis would not confirm that Mr. Pettitte was a bad witness but told ESPN that "no ballplayer in their right mind wants to come up before a congressional committee. It wasn't like he could add anything." Pending, then, any revelations from Mr. Pettitte's testimony (which will become part of the public record), the only evidence that Mr. Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs comes from Mr. McNamee.
Since the Mitchell report was released, there has been much media speculation that Mr. Clemens's situation parallels that of Barry Bonds, who is currently under indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice during the federal investigation into Balco (the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, which was found to be distributing steroids to athletes). But Bob Costas, host of HBO's "Costas Now," sees significant differences in the case against modern baseball's greatest slugger and the one being made against its greatest pitcher. "There is a mountain of evidence against Barry Bonds," Mr. Costas said in a phone interview. "There was a carefully researched book ["Game of Shadows" by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams]. There was the federal investigation into Balco. There was also an enormous distortion of statistics that was off the charts. This didn't happen with Clemens, who simply sustained a Hall of Fame level of performance over the time in which he is accused of taking PEDs. Whatever Clemens did or didn't do, he didn't become superhuman late in his career."
The statistical record seems to support Mr. Costas. Mr. Clemens's association with Mr. McNamee began in 1998 when Mr. Clemens, pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays, was 35 and went 20-6 with a 2.65 ERA. But in the previous season, also with Toronto, he was even better -- 21-7 with an ERA of 2.05. Steven Goldman of Baseball Prospectus sums up Mr. Clemens's record from 1984 to 1997, before he began working with Mr. McNamee: "He was 213-118 with an ERA of 2.97, this in a league where the average ERA was usually well above 4.00, and in two seasons over 5.00. There's no question he was the best pitcher in baseball over that period. From 1998 through last year, Clemens had some terrific seasons. But he wasn't a better pitcher after age 35 than he was before."
In contrast, from age 35 through age 39, Barry Bonds not only bettered his earlier record but became, arguably, the greatest hitter in baseball history.
There is no statistical evidence, then, that Mr. Clemens received any artificial boost from the drugs Mr. McNamee claims to have provided from 1998 to 2001. Aside from Mr. McNamee, in fact, there's not yet been evidence linking Mr. Clemens to any use of performance- enhancing drugs.
"It may turn out that Clemens is no different than Bonds," says Mr. Costas, "but until we have more evidence, there's room for reasonable doubt. Let's at least admit that Clemens has done what Bonds did not do. He filed a defamation suit against his accuser; he went on '60 Minutes'; he marched up to Capitol Hill and told them, 'I'll say the same thing to you that I did to Mike Wallace.' And when McNamee claimed to have drug paraphernalia that Clemens had used, he said, 'Sure, take my DNA.' I don't know whether or not Roger Clemens is innocent, but at this point at least, it has to be admitted that he's done the things an innocent man would do."
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Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Journal.
