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Clemens dug a hole and Pettitte can't help him

Johnette Howard

February 13, 2008

If the leaks about Andy Pettitte's deposition are correct, Roger Clemens will sit in a congressional hearing room today on Capitol Hill and continue a crash to Earth of his own making. The narrative about whether Clemens cheated to become the greatest pitcher of his generation will sharpen into more detail. And Clemens' crossover from icon to con man could be near complete.

Once Clemens decided to fight the accusations about him in the Mitchell Report, he set up his pal Pettitte, his longtime teammate and former training partner, as the tiebreaker in this tale about whether Brian McNamee helped both of them use performance-enhancing drugs. But Clemens should have known Pettitte would peel away from him if forced to, rather than risk criminal prosecution.

Pettitte may not be the innocent we thought before he confirmed McNamee did inject him twice with HGH, as McNamee claims. But all those stories about Pettitte being a family man first aren't made up. He's got a 13-year-old son back home who was involved in an all-terrain vehicle crash last month that required the boy to be airlifted by helicopter to a San Antonio hospital with two broken limbs and a severe head injury from which the boy still is recovering. For Pettitte, being present for something as important as that trumps any clubhouse code of silence or Mitchell Report embarrassment.

"It really makes you take inventory," Pettitte recently told a friend.

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The other point to remember is Clemens was in no legal jeopardy when the Mitchell Report came out. Today's hearing - and Pettitte's subsequent desposition - never would've happened if Clemens hadn't pushed this fight.

But once Clemens did, he did Pettitte no favors. Pettitte also was invited by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that will call in Clemens and McNamee for a dramatic faceoff, and Pettitte was left with two gut-wrenching choices: Side with Clemens in some bullheaded fight to the finish against McNamee. Or tell the truth about himself and pray the questions stopped there. Which they didn't.

Pushing this fight could be the worst of the many miscalculations Clemens and his team have made during a damage-control effort that keeps backfiring on them.

The "60 Minutes" interview didn't cement public opinion for Clemens. The secretly recorded phone conversation with a frazzled McNamee that Clemens played at a Jan. 7 news conference on national TV surprised and enraged McNamee so much, he angrily called his law enforcement handlers the next day and turned over what McNamee says are 7-year-old syringes and bloody gauze pads that he used on Clemens.

That exquisitely timed syringe bombshell (with photos to boot) wasn't released by McNamee's lawyers until last Wednesday - or one day after Clemens made his sworn deposition to the committee.

A new ripple of uncertainty had to slither down Clemens' spine when another PR tactic - schmoozing with about two dozen members of the committee - didn't prevent the committee from granting Pettitte's request to be excused from facing Clemens today. Portions of Pettitte's sworn statement are expected to be read instead. Meaning if a bomb does drop, Pettitte will be miles away.

But don't fault Pettitte. He isn't some snitch as much as a clear-eyed realist who was forced into this. Like Jason Giambi, Pettitte preferred to take his chances on telling the truth and asking the public for forgiveness rather than gambling on some leniency from the feds if he lied about anything. He tried to choose containment. But Clemens' defense strategy made containment impossible.

More than Clemens' place in history is in the balance. The feds don't give a damn about that. It's about who is telling the truth, and it's about how whoever is lying may have to pay.

A Yankees source said last night that Pettitte is not expected at spring training tomorrow when other pitchers and catchers report. But whenever Pettitte gets to Tampa and clears the air by talking to the media for the first time since the Mitchell Report's release, the sun may never feel warmer. Trouble may be only beginning for Clemens or McNamee, but it seems on the wane for him.

Said Pettitte's friend: "He's looking forward to [explaining himself], I can tell you that."