Clemens now pitches damage control

Once upon a time, the "K" signs would line the right-field wall in Fenway Park like Kewpie dolls at a summer carnival.

Back, of course, when the world was a much simpler place for Roger Clemens.

In a better baseball world, his career would be ending in cheers and testimonials, not the Rocket being the new centerpiece in the sleazy scandal that is baseball and steroids. In a better baseball world, Clemens would not be having to duck on the ropes as the body blows keep coming, like some old fighter waiting for the bell to bail him out.

But there was Clemens Sunday night on "60 Minutes'' trying to do damage control the way he used to try to throw fastballs by opposing hitters, as if Mike Wallace was just another guy trying to take him deep.

Somehow it all seemed sad.

But this is not about playing a child's game anymore, not about trying to throw the ball by people, something that Roger arguably did as well as anyone who has ever lived.

This is about Clemens trying to salvage his legacy, trying to rub away the tarnish that now covers a great career like a soiled old canvas on top of a masterpiece. This is about trying to say that Brian McNamee, his personal trainer, was lying in the Mitchell Report when he said he injected Clemens from 16 to 21 times with both steroids and human growth hormone during 1998, 2000, and 2001. This is about trying to make this all go away, to go back to before the Rocket became the new signature face of the baseball scandal.

So there Clemens was with Mike Wallace, indignant, saying that his success has been because of his hard work, nothing else, maintaining his innocence, saying that the only thing McNamee ever injected him with was lidocaine and vitamin B-12. No matter that saying you were getting a B-12 shot was the players' euphemism for taking steroids, usually said with a wink, wink. Or that a few weeks ago he said that McNamee had never injected him with anything.

Then again, a microphone never has been Clemens' friend.

He lost a lot of fan reverence in Boston in the winter before the 1989 season when he complained about the rigors of being a professional athlete in Boston, the travails of having to carry his own luggage through the airport. When he left the Red Sox in 1996, he said he wanted to be closer to home.

So what if home is Texas and he ended up in Toronto?

The point is Roger never has helped himself when he tries to explain his actions, which makes his recent actions all the more bewildering. Sunday night, he hedged when Wallace asked him whether he would ever take a lie-detector test, saying he wasn't sure whether the test helped or not. He also said he was shocked that close friend Andy Pettitte admitted using HGH.

All this was another stop on the Roger Clemens' Denial Tour. Take a few batting-practice fastballs from Mike Wallace and try to hit them out of the park.

Did he?

Not really.

Then again, it was if he knew that, at one point saying, "That's our country, guilty before innocent," as if he already knows that this story is a snowball that's already rolled downhill, propelled by the furor over one of the biggest scandal in baseball history, the names in the Mitchell Report the sport's version of a scarlet letter, the asterisk that hovers over a career, tarnishing everything.

He admitted that if he knew what was in the Mitchell Report he would have cooperated with the investigation, but all that is too little, too late.

Clemens and McNamee, among others, have been asked to testify before a congressional hearing Jan. 16. The stakes get higher. The climate gets more serious. Olympian Marion Jones will be sentenced Friday for perjury. Barry Bonds has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Lying to a reporter is one thing. Lying to a grand jury is another. Going in front of a congressional committee is not the same as going on "60 Minutes,'' which was a Clemens' home game Sunday night.

Then there's the lawyer for McNamee, who said last week that a defamation suit would be filed if Clemens said McNamee lied to the Mitchell investigation.

None of it is pretty, regardless of how it plays out.

There's always the chance Clemens is telling the truth, that the dog really did eat his homework. It is, after all, his word against McNamee's, even though McNamee talked to the Mitchell investigation with the threat of jail time if he lied.

But can you ever really win the court of public opinion? How do you ever really clear your name after it's become the new centerpiece of baseball's steroid scandal? How do you put the cat back in the bag?

That's Clemens' dilemma, one that he admitted to Wallace.

"I don't know if I can defend myself," he said. "I think people -- a lot of people have already made their decisions."

That was said with resignation, as if he's already come to know that nothing is ever going to be the same again, no matter what happens now. As if he's already come to know that it's never going to be about just baseball anymore, back when all he had to worry was throwing the ball by batters, those magical nights when the "K" signs would line the right-field fence at Fenway Park like Kewpie dolls at a summer carnival.

Back before it all got so complicated.

(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)