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What's gotten into Rocket?

Clemens tells '60 Minutes': I received injections, but it was lidocaine and B-12 in needle, not steroids

BY DAVID LENNON | david.lennon@newsday.com

January 4, 2008

It's true. Roger Clemens admits this Sunday on "60 Minutes" that his trainer, Brian McNamee, gave him injections, as stated in the Mitchell Report released last month.

Clemens, however, insists that they contained the painkiller lidocaine and vitamin B-12, according to excerpts released yesterday by the CBS program.

After weeks of an ongoing media battle between Clemens and McNamee, who said in the Mitchell Report that he injected the seven-time Cy Young Award winner with steroids and human growth hormone, Sunday is the first interview with the former Yankee. He broadcast a video denial on his Web site after the Mitchell Report became public and plans to hold a news conference Monday in Houston.

During Sunday's interview, Clemens is questioned at home in Katy, Texas, by longtime "60 Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace, who asks if McNamee injected him with drugs.

"Lidocaine and B-12," Clemens said. "It's for my joints, and B-12 I still take today."

"Roger took bunches of his shots over his career, much the way racehorses do, unfortunately," Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told The Associated Press yesterday.

Clemens also called McNamee's assertions "ridiculous" and said he "never" used banned performance-enhancing substances. Wallace pushed him on the latter statement but presumably did not have a Bible handy.

"Swear?" Wallace asked.

To which Clemens replied, "Swear."

Baseball players and owners did not have an agreement to ban steroids until September 2002 and didn't ban HGH until January 2005.

Despite the threats of McNamee's lawyer, Richard D. Emery, who told The New York Times that Clemens should pull the interview or risk being sued, it appears the segment will air on schedule after Sunday's NFL playoff game between the Chargers and Titans.

Emery's specialty is libel and defamation, and in this case, Clemens is contradicting McNamee's sworn testimony. Hardin sounded unfazed in an e-mail distributed to reporters.

"In his interview with '60 Minutes,' Roger told the truth," Hardin's statement said. "It is that simple. I encourage Mr. McNamee to watch the program."

Emery fired back yesterday after reading the excerpts.

"I think that this is a lawyers' game, which allows him to try and attempt to say that McNamee didn't know what he was injecting or that at least Clemens didn't know what he was injecting," Emery told AP. "It really depends now on how the whole interview goes, and whether he goes after Brian.

"Look, I don't care whether Clemens used sodium pentothal. I don't care if he used Strontium-90. My only concern is for Brian's well-being and his future."

As for suing Clemens, Emery said he will wait until after viewing the show Sunday.

"It really depends on what a reasonable person would take away from the entire interview as to whether he's going to damage Brian. And we can't tell until what we see happens on Sunday," Emery said. "But it is fascinating. I think that Hardin and Clemens are responding to the fact that McNamee is going to defend himself aggressively by them trying to parse this closely and issue this statement through CBS. So it's fascinating, and I'm glad to see that they are responding to Brian's notice to them that he is not going to be trashed by them."

In the Mitchell Report, McNamee says he personally injected Clemens with an assortment of steroids, including Winstrol and testosterone (labeled Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin). McNamee alleged that Clemens began using steroids in 1998, when Clemens pitched for the Blue Jays and McNamee was the strength and conditioning coach.

Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado, a teammate of Clemens during that time, yesterday said he did not notice anything suspicious about the relationship between the two.