My favorite part of the Roger Clemens interview on the Mike & Mike in the Morning radio show Tuesday came when he said steroids could be bad for him because of his family history, and then cited his stepfather's heart attack as evidence.
Offering a preview of his defense in a possible criminal trial, Roger Clemens appeared Tuesday morning on ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike in the Morning to reiterate his assertions that he never used steroids and to dismiss damaging claims made about him in American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime, a new book out today.
This story appears in the April 27, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated.
From the book, THE ROCKET THAT FELL TO EARTH: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality by Jeff Pearlman. Copyright © 2009 by Jeff Pearlman. Published by arrangement with HarperCollins, LLC. All rights reserved.
With Barry Bonds' perjury trial postponed until later this year, the other headliner in baseball's Steroid Era takes center stage. Roger Clemens remains the subject of a grand jury proceeding, which centers on whether Clemens knowingly lied to Congress in February 2008. If the grand jury finds there is probable cause that Clemens knowingly lied, then it will indict Clemens for perjury and he would then face a federal trial. Clemens is also the plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit against his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who has been the leading source of evidence connecting Clemens to steroids. The civil lawsuit is being heard in a federal district court in Houston, Texas.
According to The Washington Post, preliminary DNA tests of syringes provided by Roger Clemens' former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, reveal a match with Clemens' blood. Assuming the results are corroborated by additional testing, the evidence raises the likelihood that Clemens will be indicted by a grand jury and brought to trial on perjury charges in connection with an investigation into whether Clemens lied under oath to Congress last year when he denied using steroids or HGH.
Roger Clemens and his legal team may receive much-needed positive news with Tuesday's publication of Kirk Radomski's new book, Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report.
The grand jury's investigation into whether Roger Clemens committed perjury and obstruction of justice bodes poorly for Clemens and his legal team.
Reports surfaced on Monday that Roger Clemens' former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, gave samples of his DNA to federal investigators who are trying to determine whether the former pitcher committed perjury before Congress when he testified last February that he had never been injected with human growth hormone or steroids. The major point to be drawn from that news is that McNamee's evidence is stronger than it initially appeared, and that raises the probability that the evidence would be deemed admissible and persuasive in a trial.
Convicted steroid distributor Kirk Radomski handed over shipping receipts to federal investigators for a package of human growth hormone that he claims he sent to Roger Clemens' home
My favorite part of the Roger Clemens interview on the Mike & Mike in the Morning radio show Tuesday came when he said steroids could be bad for him because of his family history, and then cited his stepfather's heart attack as evidence.
Offering a preview of his defense in a possible criminal trial, Roger Clemens appeared Tuesday morning on ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike in the Morning to reiterate his assertions that he never used steroids and to dismiss damaging claims made about him in American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime, a new book out today.
This story appears in the April 27, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated.
From the book, THE ROCKET THAT FELL TO EARTH: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality by Jeff Pearlman. Copyright © 2009 by Jeff Pearlman. Published by arrangement with HarperCollins, LLC. All rights reserved.
With Barry Bonds' perjury trial postponed until later this year, the other headliner in baseball's Steroid Era takes center stage. Roger Clemens remains the subject of a grand jury proceeding, which centers on whether Clemens knowingly lied to Congress in February 2008. If the grand jury finds there is probable cause that Clemens knowingly lied, then it will indict Clemens for perjury and he would then face a federal trial. Clemens is also the plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit against his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who has been the leading source of evidence connecting Clemens to steroids. The civil lawsuit is being heard in a federal district court in Houston, Texas.
According to The Washington Post, preliminary DNA tests of syringes provided by Roger Clemens' former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, reveal a match with Clemens' blood. Assuming the results are corroborated by additional testing, the evidence raises the likelihood that Clemens will be indicted by a grand jury and brought to trial on perjury charges in connection with an investigation into whether Clemens lied under oath to Congress last year when he denied using steroids or HGH.
Roger Clemens and his legal team may receive much-needed positive news with Tuesday's publication of Kirk Radomski's new book, Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report.
The grand jury's investigation into whether Roger Clemens committed perjury and obstruction of justice bodes poorly for Clemens and his legal team.
Reports surfaced on Monday that Roger Clemens' former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, gave samples of his DNA to federal investigators who are trying to determine whether the former pitcher committed perjury before Congress when he testified last February that he had never been injected with human growth hormone or steroids. The major point to be drawn from that news is that McNamee's evidence is stronger than it initially appeared, and that raises the probability that the evidence would be deemed admissible and persuasive in a trial.
Convicted steroid distributor Kirk Radomski handed over shipping receipts to federal investigators for a package of human growth hormone that he claims he sent to Roger Clemens' home
SI.com legal analyst Michael McCann has been closely following the Roger Clemens-Brian McNamee story since the release of the Mitchell Report late last year. Last week, in this story's latest legal twist, McNamee's lawyer filed a new motion to dismiss Clemens' defamation suit against him or have it moved to New York. Today McCann answers four key questions about Clemens' growing legal problems and predicts what may become of them.
"How do we believe you because you lied, lied, lied, lied? Roger Clemens is a baseball titan...." -- Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) to Brian McNamee, Feb. 13, 2008
Roger Clemens apologized Monday for unspecified mistakes in his personal life but denied having an affair with a 15-year-old
Prospective Cubs owner Mark Cuban got as far as the front row last week in Wrigley. But although it would be a treat to see the Dallas Mavericks' outspoken owner also own baseball's beloved 99-year loser, he still may never get any closer to the owner's box than he was the other day.
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For a minute more, think back to the image of Roger Clemens sitting before Congress. (Just for another tick of the clock; then we'll take this in another direction). Thick neck. Burr-head. Twitchy, righteous indignation on his face and in his body language. Fish out of water. Fish in a barrel. Either way. Got the image? Okay, onward.
A person close to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with knowledge of its proceedings tells SI.com that Roger Clemens and his legal team made a devastating strategic blunder in regards to the now infamous Jose Canseco lunch party that took place in June 1998. The alleged blunder caused members of the committee and their staff to deeply question Clemens' veracity and the wisdom of his legal team's counsel.
The FBI is investigating whether baseball great Roger Clemens perjured himself in testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee earlier this month, government officials told CNN on Thursday.
The FBI has begun investigating whether Roger Clemens lied to Congress when he denied taking steroids, officials said
Leading members of the House of Representatives asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to probe whether baseball great Roger Clemens "committed perjury and made knowingly false statements" during a congressional hearing.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's request to the Justice Department may trigger lasting consequences from both legal and political perspectives.
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Roger Clemens climbed out of his Hummer on Wednesday morning, looked up at the dozen or so reporters waiting for him at an entrance to the Astros' minor league facility here and shook his head slowly, grimly, side to side. It was, undoubtedly, the most telling comment the embattled pitcher made all day.
According to the New York Daily News, federal investigators have a picture provided by a young man who was at the now infamous Jose Canseco house party in 1998 that reportedly shows definitively that another guest was there: Roger Clemens.
I don't do baseball, but I find a common thread between the Clemens hearing and the infamous Destruction of the Tapes. So I'll lead off with a pair of e-mails that get me talking about what I wanted to talk about anyway ... do you find this acceptable?
One afternoon in April 2003 a group of advertising executives gathered for a luncheon at the 21 Club in New York City to hear Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens speak. There was slight alarm that Clemens might not attend because, it turned out, he was scheduled to pitch that night against the Seattle Mariners, and on the days they take the mound, starters are known to be as edgy and unsociable as thoroughbreds on race day.
There has been a Dueling Banjos dynamic between two conflicting analyses that attempt to address the potential impact of performance enhancing drugs on Roger Clemens' career. One, put out by Hendricks Sports Management, Clemens' agency, suggests that Clemens' late-career success is relatively normal, citing a handful of specific examples such as Nolan Ryan and Curt Schilling. The other, prepared by the Wharton School of Business for last Sunday's New York Times, uses a broader set of "durable" comparable pitchers, and comes to the opposite conclusion.
The most important man that we heard from Wednesday on Capitol Hill, amid all the bluster, the embarrassing fawning over Roger Clemens and the multitude of mind-squishingly moronic questions, happened to be nowhere near Capitol Hill. Yet Andy Pettitte's presence at baseball's latest hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was unmistakable, his words unshakeable.
Along with other testimony on Wednesday, Roger Clemens swore on his good name that his identity was not stitched together by baseball seams.
The woman who worked as Roger Clemens' nanny and was a focus point of Wednesday's Congressional hearings told a Houston TV station that Clemens was not at Jose Canseco's house party in 1998, as alleged by Brian McNamee.
Though stumbling on a couple of questions and leaving several others unanswered, Roger Clemens nonetheless emerged favorably from Wednesday's hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Keep in mind, Clemens' primary goal was not to preserve or rehabilitate his baseball reputation or even to convince the legions of fans who disbelieve him -- as others have written, he may have failed miserably on those ends -- but rather to avoid perjury charges. Unless verifiable physical evidences emerges to the contrary, it seems unlikely the available evidence would lead to a conclusive finding that he committed perjury. Here's why, along with other observations:
Roger Clemens said Wednesday he received only vitamin shots from Brian McNamee, but the ex-trainer insisted before a House panel that every injection contained steroids or other performance enhancers.
It was a day of misremembering, misunderstanding, and mystifying inconsistencies, and, in the end, committee members' conclusions about whether or not Roger Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone seemed to hang on how credible Andy Pettitte is, or how credible Brian McNamee isn't.
Roger Clemens squared off against his former trainer in nearly five hours of testimony before a House committee on Wednesday. Please answer a few questions on what you took away from the proceedings.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci joined in SI.com's live blog of Wednesday's Congressional hearings featuring Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee. Below are excerpts from Verducci's commentary as the hearings unfolded.
Brian McNamee said he injected Roger Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs more often than he previously claimed
1) Why would Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch and Kirk Radomski ask out of the hearing?
Roger Clemens' claim that he didn't attend the now-infamous Jose Canseco-hosted party in June 1998 is unlikely to score big points for him at Wednesday's hearing, people connected to the House Oversight Committee told SI.com.
I love this story. I really love it. I can't help it. This has everything that you could possibly ask for in a good yarn. Drama. Mystery. Loyalty and betrayal. A good dose of tragedy. A healthy touch of the absurd. And you know what's best about this real-life struggle between Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee?
Many moons ago, Mad magazine ran photos of prominent politicians with a concise expression of disgust at the bottom of each: Ecccch.
About the only thing Roger Clemens may have going for him these days is his celebrity, which is why I don't entirely blame him for his Campaign Across Congress, a tour meant to lobby for his no-steroid story with the aid of autographs and pictures.
It appears from his one-on-one meetings with members of Congress that Roger Clemens will be sticking to his guns when he goes before the congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Feb. 13.
As Roger Clemens opens a new chapter in his career -- the one where he defends everything that came before: the seven Cy Youngs, the 354 wins, the 4,672 strikeouts -- one aspect of the journey should be familiar to him. As was the case when he stared down hitters from the mound, Clemens has a single adversary with whom to do battle: his former personal trainer Brian McNamee.
With Chuck Knoblauch having agreed to meet with the congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the full batting order is set for the Feb. 13 congressional hearing. On Wednesday, Andy Pettitte will meet privately with committee staff members, with Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee, Knoblauch and Kirk Radomski heading to Washington D.C. in the following days.
The hardest part of this whole Steroids Period in baseball -- sounds much less ominous than Steroids Era, doesn't it? -- is figuring out who and what to believe. I'm not talking Roger Clemens vs. Brian McNamee here, though that's the sub-prime example of the day. I'm talking, on any given day, about the difficulty in trying to determine who has been messing around with the stuff and who hasn't. Or, in any glance through the record book, what is legitimate and what is not.
Roger Clemens had another bad outing on Tuesday. And this time, it didn't come from a pitching mound, in front of a television camera or behind a microphone.
It's hard to gauge the impact that the playing of a 17-minute, recorded phone conversation between Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee during Clemens' press conference on Jan. 7 had on public opinion. But it doesn't seem to have impressed members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who will hear testimony from the two men next month. SI.com interviews with seven committee members suggest that the Congressmen and women who will be grilling Clemens and McNamee found the recording, at best, to yield little informational value. At worst, they saw it as tasteless.
Viewpoint: The House helped baseball begin to crack down on steroids three years ago. But by stepping into the Roger Clemens mess, Washington can only strike out
The Mitchell Report dropped bombshell allegations from former trainer Brian McNamee that he injected Roger Clemens with steroids during Clemens' brilliant career. Now the Rocket is launching a serious of denials in a campaign to salvage his reputation.
Most of you never heard of Ralph Beard -- or if you did, had forgotten him -- by the time he died a few weeks ago just short of eighty.
HOUSTON -- It has to rain soon. You can feel the humidity as it settles like a blanket over the empty baseball field at Westfield High School, home of the Mustangs. The only light peeking through the gray clouds lends the brick visitor's dugout a dappled skin. The field is just miles from the George R. Brown Convention Center, where Roger Clemens held a press conference on Monday to refute his former personal trainer's claims that he used steroids and human growth hormone. Just a few miles away, but a million miles away.
HOUSTON -- Roger Clemens' Monday news conference -- his first since the Mitchell Report revealed former trainer Brian McNamee's allegations that Clemens used steroids -- left reporters with as many questions as answers. Let's look at them.
Roger Clemens answered questions for the first time Sunday night on 60 Minutes about the steroid allegations made against him by his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, in the Mitchell Report. Please take the time to answer a few questions on how Clemens fared and what this should mean for his legacy.
Roger Clemens was shocked -- shocked! -- at how little rooting capital he had after his seven Cy Young Award-winning career. "You'd think I'd get an inch of respect," he complained to CBS's Mike Wallace on Sunday night. "An inch." But these are unforgiving times for athletes who carry the taint of steroid abuse, and a rush to judgment has long since replaced the walk down memory lane. Too many of them have lied for too long, and a fan's protective reflex, no matter what the level of defiance offered in protest, has finally become disbelief.
Brian McNamee sits mostly stone-faced as Roger Clemens, his onetime client, brings the heat. "Ridiculous," "hogwash" -- terms used by the seven-time Cy Young Award winner to discredit McNamee's bombshell testimony in the Mitchell Report, in which the longtime personal trainer told investigators that he had injected Clemens with HGH and anabolic steroids -- fail to break McNamee's calm.
I want to believe Roger Clemens. I really do. The man seems so hassled, so under siege, so scarily angry right now. He seems so ... desperate. Wouldn't it be easier on everyone -- well, maybe not Brian McNamee, but almost everyone else -- if the great Clemens, the best pitcher of this generation and maybe any other one, were actually telling the truth?
On Monday, Roger Clemens held a news conference in which he played a tape of his Friday telephone conversation with the man who has accused him of using steroids, his former trainer, Brian McNamee. SI.com's Michael McCann tackles legal questions raised by the news conference, including Clemens' options in his possible appearance before Congress.
With his jaw clenched and the adrenalin flowing as if he were pitching the seventh game of the World Series, Roger Clemens pounced on the question from Mike Wallace. It came 250 seconds into his interview on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday night, and the response was pure defiance.
Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte were asked Friday to testify before a congressional committee on Jan. 16, along with their former trainer, Brian McNamee
Roger Clemens said former trainer Brian McNamee injected him with the painkiller lidocaine and the vitamin B-12 -- not any performance-enhancing drugs.
Ten years have passed since I first held a Hall of Fame ballot in my hands, and it still ranks as one of the more awe-inspiring moments of my life. To realize that you have a say in who will be immortalized in Cooperstown -- and also who won't -- is a huge responsibility.
A variety of thoughts on the Mitchell Report now that the dust has begun to settle:
Roger Clemens' denials are getting louder and somehow less convincing as he attempts to extricate himself from the steroid allegations made against him in the bombshell, worth-every-penny Mitchell Report that contains 8 1/2 pages of compelling, detailed evidence against the would-be Hall of Famer.
A lawyer for Roger Clemens strongly denies the seven-time Cy Young Award winner used steroids to pump up his body and his pitching statistics.
Me and Roger Clemens -- we started down the steroid road together. He was heading for the Cy Young award. I just wanted a Pulitzer.
The hard rectangular case is black, with silver steel reinforcements at its edges and a silver steel handle on top. It is the size of a small suitcase. It stands, seemingly obedient, at home and away, day and night, at the foot of the locker of New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens. Stenciled in large white figures on the side is the code E-22. On each corner are smaller letters, also stenciled in white: M.I.B.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Page after page, Roger Clemens' name was all over the Mitchell Report.
Releasing a report that links some of baseball's best to the use of performance-enhancing substances, former Sen. George Mitchell said Thursday it is critical that Major League Baseball restore the integrity of the game.
You should not be surprised. Not one name on the list should shock you -- not even Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, two of the most prominent players who were linked to steroid use in the Mitchell Report released on Thursday. One more time, boys and girls: It was The Steroid Era, a clearly defined historical period, like the Depression or the Cold War.
The following is excerpted from Pages 167 to 175 of the Mitchell Report; footnotes are not included here.
Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte were the first names to emerge Thursday from the Mitchell report
Roger Clemens dialed up a 92-mph fastball and threw it past Victor Martinez for strike three. It was the 59th pitch of the game for Clemens, and likely the final pitch of his storied career. His shoulders slumped and then Clemens limped off the field to a mixture of cheers and boos from a crowd of more than 56,000 at Yankee Stadium.
Of the thousands of players who have pitched in a major league game, only 23 have won 300 games. Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are the only members of the group whose careers were spent entirely in the era of the five-man rotation, a testament to their durability and work ethic. Below are baseball's 300-game winners, listed in reverse chronological order.
Emerging, finally, from an exit at Yankee Stadium, Roger Clemens strode into the last hour of golden daylight last Saturday. He wore black slacks, a royal blue dress shirt and a fresh pruning from the team barber. Down below, in a corridor outside the Yankees' clubhouse, a handful of yellow-shirted security guards were able to smile at last. One of them clicked open a pen and ran a line of black ink through clemens on a sheet of paper listing all of the New York players. Clemens's name, again, was the last to be crossed out, some two hours after the Yankees' 11-8 win over the Mets had ended. Only now could the guards go home.
With all the hoopla surrounding Roger Clemens' debut in The Bronx on Saturday, fantasy-leaguers may have missed all of the other key call-ups this week that preceded The Rocket. Yes, this was a big week of promotions from the minors and help is definitely on the way. Now the key is to pick up the right prospects for your fantasy teams.
NEW YORK -- It wasn't until after his 108th and final pitch that the Yankee Stadium crowd felt comfortable showering Roger Clemens with the appreciation that been building since his last visit to the Bronx, when he announced his return to pinstripes. And that pitch was vintage Clemens, a splitter biting down and away from the flailing swing of Pirates lefty Ryan Doumit, preserving a one-run lead after six innings of work.
Baseball's luxury tax never seemed so luxurious. The Yankees are shelling out $24.6 million in salary and luxury tax for a 44-year-old six-inning pitcher whose return already was once delayed by a "fatigued groin" that occurred after just three minor league starts. Consider it money well spent for New York. Roger Clemens, yes, even the six-inning version back in the more difficult American League, brings exactly the kind of ferocity and competitiveness an underachieving Yankee team needs.
Already we're into our usual summer spectaculars -- another Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek the Third, Spiderman 3, and, of course ... Roger Clemens, going on 45.
The realm of baseball economics and the ways in which teams ascribe value to individual players has always been polarizing territory, dividing those who approach it with gut instinct and those who prefer to crunch numbers.
With a dramatic seventh-inning announcement, Roger Clemens made himself a returning hero, a difference-maker, and a whole big pile of cash.
If you've ever listened to Roger Clemens, or if you've listened to him lately, you know that winning the World Series always has been his goal. It's why he plays. It's why he's still playing. The man, clearly, has a thing for rings.
With one quick record-setting stroke of the pen, and one big announcement on the big screen above Yankee Stadium by Roger Clemens, the Yankees moved back into the ballgame Sunday. This is the best $28 million they ever spent (and actually since the salary's pro-rated over the entire season, it'll only cost them between $18-19 million).
Also in this column: • Blue Jays in pain • Orioles interested in Kim • More news and notes
The New York Yankees took advantage of Roger Clemens' attendance at Legends Field on Wednesday to ask Clemens back to the Bronx, SI.com has learned.
The dynamic in the Astros' training camp, in ways subtle and strong, is different this spring. It's early yet, so there's plenty of time for that dynamic to shift, for the personality of this team to morph again -- maybe dozens of times -- before the months-long monstrosity that they call a baseball season is over.
Nobody in baseball can fail to be amazed by Roger Clemens. The man will be 45 years old later this year and he still can outpitch -- if he decides to keep pitching, that is -- guys half his age. Guys any age, for that matter.
By unloading Randy Johnson, the New York Yankees didn't merely clear $14 million of his $16 million salary off their books and move a pitcher who didn't comfortably fit in New York back home to Arizona (not to mention one who just had back surgery -- though word is he's fine and will be ready for spring training). Or add four younger, less expensive players to the Yankees' organization. They also greatly enhanced their chances of signing the star pitcher they really want: Roger Clemens.
This year's Major League Baseball All-Star game is being played in Houston on July 13, and the hometown Astros have been garnering all sorts of attention--even though they're nine games out of firs...
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