When Clemens first announced that he was going on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace, I thought he was crazy. I said he was putting a target on his back and just asking anybody out there who had any evidence at all against him to come forward and present it. I thought that there was absolutely no way that Clemens could know what corroborating evidence might be out there, and that surely someone would step forward and call him a liar and tell their story.

For instance, people’s ego’s are huge. Everybody wants to “be somebody”, to know somebody or have some “inside scoop” on some big personality. Brian McNamee was a New York “boy”, I could just imagine McNamee getting together with some of his lifelong New York buddies and they are out one night having some drinks, and after quite a few drinks, McNamee says he wants to tell them something but they have to promise that they won’t tell anybody. Well naturally everybody says they won’t tell a soul. McNamee then tells them that he is “fueling” the Rocket, that he is giving Clemens steroid injections. Of course his buddies get home that night and, the first thing they say to there wives is, “promise me you won’t tell anybody this, but Mac said he is injecting Roger Clemens with steroids”. Well, the next day, wifey talks to one of here “close” friends and gets her to promise she won’t tell anybody, and the friend agrees, and then wifey tells her that McNamee said he was injecting Clemens with steroids. And so it goes.

When Clemens went on 60 Minutes, there is no way he could have known if McNamee had told somebody about injecting steroids or not, unless Clemens was well aware that McNamee had never injected him. After Clemens went on 60 Minutes no one, not McNamee’s buddies, not Jose Canseco, not any players who “had it in” for Clemens, no one, came forward with any evidence to indicate that Clemens was lying.

In what may be the biggest glaring “hole” in the case against Clemens, is the “money” issue. Money is usually one of the easiest ways to “trace” what has happened. In the MItchell Report there were a number of copies of canceled checks issued by a number of players, that were payments for steroids. That is hard, corroborating evidence. Mitchell presented no check copies of Roger Clemens that were suppose to be payments for steroids. To the best of my knowledge, money was never mentioned in the Mitchell Report, regarding Roger Clemens. That in itself is very strange.

Again, in the Congressional hearing where Clemens and McNamee testified, to the best of my knowledge “money” was never mentioned. If McNamee was injecting Clemens with steroids, how was McNamee being paid. That is a very common sense question, but it was never raised. All McNamee would have had to say was, I received my “regular” fee for being Roger’s personal trainer which was, say $3,000 a month, then when I injected him, he paid me and additional, say $1,000 to cover the steroids. You can see these amounts in the checks he gave me. That would have been hard, corroborating evidence, but it never happened.

Supposedly Andy Pettitte’s testimony to the Congressional staff that were doing the investigation, was damaging to Clemens. But if you read the transcripts of the testimony, very near the end Pettitte is talking with the staff members, Pettite was sort of “casually” rambling on, and he said something about “I have thought back over the conversation with Roger, and I wonder if I might have misunderstood what Roger said”. Bingo! The usefulness of anything that Pettitte had said just went down the drain. Just get into a court of law and let Clemens’ lawyer cross examine Pettitte and ask him if he said “I wonder if I might have misunderstood what Roger said” and Pettitte is just about useless as a witness against Clemens.

Again, I don’t know whether Clemens took steroids or not, but I do know that there is at this point, very little hard evidence that he did take steroids. The case at the present time is basically Clemens’ word against McNamee’s word. Right after the Congressional hearing, the usual panel of “experts” on TV, analyzed what had transpired, and I remember one lawyer saying that based on the testimony before the Committee, that it would be very difficult to get a perjury conviction against Clemens in a court of law.

Wouldn’t it be ironic, if it turns out, that of all the accused baseball steroid users, that Roger Clemens is the only one who would have a “not guilty” court of law decision to back up his claim that he never used steroids.