Roger Clemens had 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game...twice. Once against the Seattle Mariners, the other against the Detroit Tigers. He accomplished a feat which has never been matched in Major League Baseball's rich and enduring history.
The active career strike-out leader and seven-time Cy Young winner could not deliver a strike to the United States House Oversight and Government Reform committee Wednesday, however. He threw his pitch on performance-enhancing drug use far and outside to a panel considering his potential fate within the sport, and, ultimately, withing the criminal justice system.
Furthermore, his untimely walk may have allowed the opposition to get into scoring position in his attempt to win his most important game of pitches and strikes, and hits and misses in his career.
William Roger Clemens, a 45-year-old pitcher who has been unafraid to throw close to batters in his career, took the same tactical approach to Capitol Hill on Wednesday hoping his name and intimidation would get the better of the committee lined up to take swings at claims he used human growth hormones during his career.
Clemens was unable to scare off the opposition or force them to go down looking as he attempted to pitch out of the jam created when his former trainer, Brian McNamee, tipped the team facing Clemens on a secret behind the star pitcher's success—that Roger Clemens used a performance-enhancing drug. McNamee, who, despite confessing to having lied at times during testimony, says he injected HGH in Clemens' butt.
Clemens' biggest adversary during the game he is playing with his future was in Henry Waxman, one who took his time in the batter's box against the 6-foot 4-inch pitcher.
Waxman, the Committee Chairman, watched as Clemens hid the ball (read truth) in his hand behind his back in an attempt to cover up which pitch he had in store for the delegation.
It took approximately five hours for Waxman to finish the at-bat, one which drew only four pitches from a man whom ESPN analysts have considered the "Greatest Living pitcher." Clemens was unable to force the Oversight Committee into an out, with Waxman and the Democrats grilling Clemens earning a free pass on base—one which appears to be leading to the United States Justice Department.
Perhaps Clemens, who is eighth on the career wins list with 354 and second with 4,672 strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan's 5,714, misremembered where the strike zone began and ended—much the same way his teammate Andy Pettitte "misremembered" a casual, yet private, conversation with Clemens in either 1999 or 2000 in which Clemens, according to Pettitte's sworn deposition before Congress, "told me he had taken HGH (human growth hormone)."
"Andy Pettitte is my friend," Clemens said during the opening stage of his hearing. "He was my friend before this. He will be my friend after this. I think Andy has misheard. I think he misremembers our conversation."
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