Clemens makes pitch of his life to Congress

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This is what it has come down to: One of the best pitchers in baseball history in front of a congressional hearing. One of the best pitchers in baseball history trying to blow away United State representatives the way he used to blow away Major League hitters. Roger Clemens fighting for his legacy. That's what this has come down to. And let's hope he knows what he's doing, because he walked on dangerous ground Wednesday, appearing before a congressional hearing under oath, once again clinging to his statement that he never used performance-enhancing drugs as if it were a lifeline, as though if he keeps repeating it he will somehow find a way to make it all true. As if the iron will that once made him such a great pitcher can also make this nightmare go away. So he brought out all of the pitches in his repertoire, even if they were irrelevant. We got the tough childhood, the fact his father died when Clemens was 9 and how he used baseball to get to college. We got how hard he's worked at his craft. We got how he went out and pitched for Team USA, all but wrapping himself in the flag. We saw flashes of his indignation, or as he asked in the beginning: how can you disprove a negative? And in the end? After the five hours of Wednesday's dog-and-pony show? We don't know much more than we did before. Because someone is lying here, there's no question about that. Clemens says he never took performance drugs. Brian McNamee, his onetime trainer and friend, says he administered them to him. Take your pick. But ask yourself this: Why would McNamee lie when he'd been told by the government before the Mitchell Report that he would be prosecuted if he didn't tell the truth? That's the bind Clemens has been in since the Mitchell Report was released, and it goes way beyond whether you think McNamee is someone who was accepted into Clemens' inner world and then betrayed him, the ultimate rat. Why would he lie about this? What does he have to gain by it? That's further complicated, of course, by the fact that what McNamee told investigators about both Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch have been confirmed by both Pettitte and Knoblauch. Why would he lie about Clemens when he didn't lie about Pettitte? That's the great-unanswered question, the one that still clings to Clemens like an accusation, and yesterday did nothing to answer it. But the high, hard one that came right at Clemens' head Wednesday was the news Pettitte said in an affidavit that Clemens told him nearly 10 years ago he used HGH. The same Andy Pettitte who's been a close friend of Clemens for years, sometimes referred to as "Roger's little brother." The same Andy Pettitte who is respected throughout baseball as a solid person. How did Clemens explain this? He said Pettitte must have "misheard" him. So now we have the news that both his best friend and his wife took HGH, but he essentially was unaware. That's what Clemens now wants us to believe. The irony is that Pettitte already has publicly admitted to using HGH a couple of times several years ago to get over an injury. The Yankees have re-signed him and life goes on. If anything, Pettitte has been lauded for admitting it, apologizing for it, and now seems unscathed by it. Not only are we a forgiving society, but we are a cynical one, too: we've come to expect that many baseball players were involved in some level of drug abuse in the last decade or so. Odds are the same thing would have happened to Clemens if he had admitted some past abuse. He still would have been thought of as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. He still would have had his legacy, even if it came with a bit of tarnish. But isn't everyone a little tarnished who played in baseball's so-called steroid era? That's the irony here, the sense that none of this would be happening now if Clemens had said that, yeah, I tried it a couple of times years ago, it was a mistake, and I apologize, end of story. That's what haunts him as he now plays this out, upping the ante, raising the stakes. For this was not exactly chatting with sportswriters in spring training. Nor was it even going on "60 Minutes.'' This was going before a congressional hearing under oath. This was the real big leagues. Let's hope Clemens understands this. He has spent so much of his adult life insulated from the real world, living in the rarefied world of the celebrity athlete. He has spent so much of his adult life living in his own reality.And, hey, maybe he's actually telling the truth, maybe he really is the victim here. Maybe. Regardless, Clemens has put himself in a corner, clinging to his supposed innocence, wanting us to believe that, for whatever reason, McNamee decided to lie about him while he told the truth about Pettitte, as improbable as that might seem. "No matter what happens, my reputation is tarnished," Clemens said, the regret in his voice. Yes, it is. He better hope now that's his biggest problem.(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)