Rocket's "Pitch" Misses Target, Government Gets a Walk

Clemens was seated before the committee whose sole responsibility in this matter is to come to terms with allegations of steroid use by him and several other major league players who appeared in Senator George Mitchell’s Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball behind a sign which read "Mr. Clemens".

The phonetic spelling would have been, Mis-ster Clem-ens—with an emphasis placed on the Mis.

Mis-ster Clemens, the imposing 234-pound short-haired witness, appeared before many on the committee to have willfully and regularly misrepresented statements of fact and presented fictional accounts of events which were deemed to have occurred by a witness whom the committee, and Clemens, stated it had respected, namely Pettitte.

"I know that some people will still think I am lying no matter what I say or do. And I know that because I’ve said that I didn’t take steroids, it will look like an attack on Senator Mitchell’s report. I am not saying Senator Mitchell’s report is entirely wrong and I am not trying to convince those who have already made up their minds based only on an allegation. For those with an open mind, however, I am saying that Brian McNamee’s statements about me are wrong. Once again, I never took steroids or human growth hormone."

Pettitte's sworn testimony mentions that he used HGH in 2004. The Yankees lefthander, a confessed devout Christian, spoke to committee lawyers under oath last week and provided information which coincided with many of McNamee's claims—a point which may come back to haunt Clemens, who'd pitched to the committee that everyone except he, himself, was either mis-informed, had mis-remembered, or had mis-stated the truth.

Waxman said he planned to allow the Mitchell Report to stand as the final word until Rusty Hardin called it "a horrible, disgraceful report" when the 409-page report was released on Dec. 13, 2007. Waxman then stated that the committee had a duty to investigate "a serious claim of inaccuracy."

On an uneventful day where McNamee was told he'd told "lie after lie after lie after lie," the government committee heard legal and binding testimony by three principles in the matter: Clemens, McNamee, and Charlie Scheeler, Investigator on Senator Mitchell’s staff.

Clemens and McNamee both faced credibility issues and, at the end of the day, neither was closer to being more believable than the other.

Clemens stated in his sworn testimony that he never used performance-enhancing drugs and that McNamee was being dishonest. McNamee stated the opposite—he not only provided Clemens with the HGH, but injected him with it. Not Lidocaine or Vitamin B-12 as Clemens had stated in an earlier press conference.

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