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Texas-sized meltdown for arrogant Clemens

Ken Davidoff

11:16 PM EST, February 13, 2008

WASHINGTON

George Mitchell opened up a fissure between baseball ownership and the Players Association. Roger Clemens got the Republicans and Democrats to go at it like Athens and Sparta.

Advantage, Rocket.

What else would you .expect from the man who does everything Texas big?

It figures that when Clemens' reputation went down in flames, as it very much did Wednesday on Capitol Hill, it plummeted with a larger-than-life flourish. The seven-time Cy Young Award winner even pulls off failure more smoothly than the rest of us.

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From the speechifying to the self-deification, from the name-dropping -- George H.W. Bush received more shout-outs Wednesday than he had in about 15 years -- to the complete lack of accountability, this was vintage Rocket.

As he threw a slew of his intimates -- his wife (for using human growth hormone), his agents (for not informing him about Mitchell's interest in speaking with him) and Andy Pettitte (for a faulty memory), for starters -- under the bus, during his testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I had a flashback. Suddenly, I was in the Yankees' clubhouse after a loss, hearing Clemens explain that if only Scott Brosius hadn't booted that ball, he would've prevailed.

I'm sorry to those remaining Clemens apologists out there, but Wednesday removed virtually all doubt as to who is telling the truth in Clemens' nasty battle with Brian McNamee. Granted, McNamee is anything but an ideal witness. But Congress, unlike Mitchell, possessed the muscle to open many doors, and none shed a positive light on Clemens.

Take your pick. How about the doctor commissioned by the Democrats who, after looking at an MRI of Clemens' buttocks injury from 1998, said it more likely resulted from steroids than B12? Then there's Clemens' now-infamous former nanny, who contradicted Clemens' testimony that he didn't spend any time at Jose Canseco's house in June 1998, an only mildly relevant issue that Clemens' attorneys tried to magnify in their client's favor.

How about, most of all, Pettitte, who provided a devastating account of two conversations about human growth hormone with Clemens, along with confirmation from Pettitte's wife?

"To have Mr. Clemens verify that is a very honest guy, I mean, you can't do much better than that," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), one of the day's stars, said.

Clemens' response to his longtime teammate Pettitte's testimony -- that he "mis-remembered" -- was lame, and yet it also reflected Clemens' down-home charm. Unlike McNamee, Clemens will never be a professor. His mangling of the English language, as well as his tendency to veer way, way off topic, stand as part of the Rocket Persona.

It was former Yankee Mike Stanton who once joked to reporters that we needed to purchase a "Clemens-to-English .dictionary."

Even when speaking in tongues, however, Clemens comes off as a giant. Don't buy the hype that Clemens is perpetually surly; he can be a charmer. Witness his line Wednesday to New York's own Rep. Carolyn Maloney that, had he known why Mitchell wanted to speak with him, "I would've been there in a New York minute."

In a perverse way, .Clemens deserves credit. We all challenged him: "OK, Roger, if McNamee is lying, then sue him. Go tell it to Congress, under oath." His response, like the cowboy he envisions himself to be: "OK, I will."

Few of us thought, back when the Mitchell Report came out, that Clemens and his attorneys Lanny Breuer and Rusty Hardin would possess the courage, or .the stupidity, or both, to take it this far.

But give the committee props as well for conducting a slew of research on this matter, most of it to .Clemens' detriment, placing the legend in serious .jeopardy of perjury charges. And chairman Henry .Waxman shut down Clemens following an attempt to violate the rules and speak out of turn, proving that not quite everyone is beholden to The Rocket.

Clemens issued a brief, post-hearing statement, then headed down a stairway that immediately was blocked off by three Capitol police .officers. He'll be back, in some forum, and odds are he won't look or sound much worse for his troubles. Nevertheless, this was a gigantic loss here, perfectly matching Clemens' oversized persona.