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They should interview Pettitte, McNamee instead

Johnette Howard

January 4, 2008

I know 10 million people are expected to watch disgraced pitcher Roger Clemens defend himself on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, but interviewer Mike Wallace is talking to the wrong guy. Clemens, in addition to being Wallace's self-described good friend, doesn't have anything new to tell us about his alleged steroid and HGH use. Clemens' lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, said so himself in an interview this week.

Hardin said the sitdown that Wallace taped with Clemens last Friday at Clemens' home in Katy, Texas, shows a very "emotional" Clemens but contains no "surprises." That is, unless you count Clemens' decision to invoke the ol' Rafael Palmeiro defense. In the interview, according to a news release from CBS yesterday, Clemens said the only injections he took from a former personal trainer were for vitamin B-12 and the painkiller lidocaine.

So go ahead, tune in, if you want to hear that or see a grown power pitcher cry.

If Wallace - now five months shy of his 90th birthday - really wanted to prove he hasn't lost anything since his pit bull heyday of ambushing liars in parking lots and battering crooks with questions on camera until they melted into a puddle of sweat, he should've pounded the pavement until he landed the real prize interviews in this story: Andy Pettitte or Brian McNamee, the strength and conditioning trainer both pitchers once shared.

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McNamee is, of course, the man who implicated Clemens and Pettitte in the Mitchell Report on illegal performance-enhancing drugs after cutting a deal with federal authorities to avoid prosecution as long as he told the truth about what he knew.

But Earl Ward, one of McNamee's New York-based attorneys, said in a telephone interview yesterday that neither McNamee nor his legal team was contacted by anyone at CBS in relation to the Clemens interview. Ward also said that in the days before the report was released Dec. 13, McNamee accurately predicted how Pettitte and Clemens would respond.

"Brian said to me, 'Andy is going to own up to this' and I said, 'You're out of your mind,'" Ward said. "But Brian said, 'No. Andy's a really honest and decent guy.' I said, 'Yeah, but still, nobody's going to admit to this. Like most athletes, they'll deny it and say, 'The guy's a liar.' But Brian was right. His only reaction [since] was basically 'I knew Andy would step up and admit to his use.' He was not surprised."

Petttite took just 48 hours to issue a statement admitting that McNamee told the truth about twice injecting him with HGH. And it's been damaging to Clemens' credibility. Knowing how close the two teammates, workout partners and fellow Houston residents were, it's been riveting to watch how Pettitte broke away from his mentor and took a cue from Yankees teammate Jason Giambi's behavior during the BALCO scandal. Like Giambi, Pettitte admitted his guilt rather than start the sort of high-wire fight Clemens now is undertaking, same as Barry Bonds and Palmeiro did before him.

You know how that turned out. Giambi has been allowed to go on with his life. Palmeiro has been discredited and lampooned. Bonds faces facing perjury charges after daring the feds to come get him.

Clemens is inviting similar risks but seems to be fighting back for the same reasons Bonds did. Clemens can't stand to see his unique place in baseball history tarnished. Like Bonds, he doesn't seem to countenance the idea that asking forgiveness or saying his drug use was limited might be shrewder and more successful.

"I think it's ill-advised strategy for Clemens," Ward said. "I understand where he's coming from, in the sense he has this enormous legacy to protect. But on some level, along the way, there's bound to be problems. Because he's not telling the truth."

By unequivocally maintaining his innocence, Clemens has left himself little wiggle room. If Wallace did a good job of interviewing him, he made Clemens forcefully address a central question in this case: Why should anyone believe that McNamee told the truth about Pettitte but lied about Clemens?

Wallace also should have made Clemens explain the conspicuous parallels between the timing of his alleged drug use with McNamee and some sharp spikes in his performance. Clemens won four Cy Young Awards after leaving the Boston Red Sox in his mid-30s for Toronto, then the Yankees and Houston. Was that all attributable to B-12?

So let Clemens and his chum Wallace talk Sunday. I'd rather hear if Pettitte has anything more to say when he reports to Yankees spring training next month.