Texas-Sized Ego Got Best Of Clemens
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By DERON SNYDER
In deciding to voluntarily testify before Congress in 2008, Roger Clemens displayed little intelligence and insulted our own. Now everyone has to pay as baseball, yet again, is dragged through its Steroid Era.
The federal trial taking place at 333 Constitution Ave. would be totally unnecessary if Clemens had exercised a smidgen of common sense. He should’ve either clammed up or ‘fessed up when his name appeared in the Mitchell Report, baseball’s independent investigation into steroid use in the game.
But no, not the “Rocket,” not a mean and ornery Texan who couldn’t stand the thought of admitting he wasn’t as big and bad as his image suggested.
No one forced Clemens to file a defamation lawsuit against his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, who claims he injected ‘roids into Clemens‘ butt on multiple occasions. The seven-time Cy Young winner didn’t have to hold a news conference and play a secretly recorded phone call with McNamee that proved nothing. And Clemens wasn’t obligated to sit down with the venerable Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” and vehemently deny ever using performance-enhancing drugs.
But those bonehead decisions were merely wild pitches, none of which led to Clemens‘ presence in U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton’s courtroom the past couple of days. The reason he’s facing possible jail time is the high and tight offerings to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, even though he was told he didn’t have to testify.
