The big winner in the Clemens-McNamee congressional hearing was the Mitchell Report.
About the only thing that was missing from Wednesday's visit to Washington by Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee was Michael Corleone sitting at the back of the room alongside Andy Pettitte. When all was said and done, Clemens came off looking far worse than McNamee, something I didn't think was possible when this whole exercise began.
Despite the fact that this was more about politics -- the Republicans in the room defended Clemens while the Democrats grilled him -- than getting to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Here's what I came away with after listening to the hearings on radio as I drove home from an unbelievably snowy Kitchener, Ontario, and then watched the balance of it at home:
1 -- Clemens had more inconsistencies in the way that he recollects this whole mess than Rogers sells mobile phones. And it's a good thing that he's such a workout monster because it takes a lot of strength to throw that many people under the bus to save your own skin. His wife, his late mother and Blue Jays doctor Ron Taylor were all used to deflect any of the blame away from himself. His mangling of the English language when describing conversations he had with Pettitte regarding human growth hormone (HGH) provided some of the best comedy of the 'Melba Toast-dry' hearings. Once again, Clemens came off as a big, ol' Texas hayseed which the Republicans in the room loved because it reminded them of their boss. And Clemens didn't do himself any favours with the rest of us who see through his blarney on a couple of fronts. By contacting his former nanny, whose attendance at Jose Canseco's pool party back in 1998 is a key sticking point, gave the appearance of impropriety and led to a heated exchange between committee chairman Henry Waxman and a member of Clemens' legal team, Rusty Hardin. And then during Waxman's closing statement, Clemens shouted out to correct something Waxman stated, leading the chairman to bang his gavel angrily and fire back, "This is not your time to argue with me."
2 -- McNamee came in as a shady character and left the same way. He stuck to his guns and didn't add anything to a mountain of lies that he's made in the past. While the Republicans on the committee did everything in their power to break him down, the former trainer to the stars held firm. And we also learned that McNamee did warn both Clemens and Pettitte that they would be named in the Mitchell Report. In the long run, helping his so-called friends will not be looked on favourably when the time comes for him to be punished for all that he has done in the sordid affair.
3 -- The winner in this is clearly the Mitchell Report itself. None of what was reported, nor the names that were named, were shown to be false during the four-and-a-half hour, made-for-TV grilling. In fact, what I'm starting to realize is that the 90 players identified in the 409-page report -- with no aid whatsoever from the players’ union -- may just represent a fraction of the number that have actually used performance-enhancing drugs. No wonder no one wants to dwell on the past. It's just too bad that the U.S. Congress, which has far greater responsibilities than policing baseball, had to waste their valuable time on this.
In the end, baseball came off looking badly, but it will rebound. It always has. Pitchers and catchers are assembling at various camps throughout Arizona and Florida this weekend, fans will start flocking to sunnier climes in March to watch their teams play pre-season games and opening day will be here before we know it. For Blue Jays, a lot of positive talk is coming out of Dunedin already, save for Sal Fasano telling the Globe and Mail that he was promised the back-up catching job by Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi before he went out and signed Rod Barajas for the role. So, promises were apparently broken, but that's nothing new.
Let's just not forget the shortened lives of Ken Caminiti and Steve Bechler, who died after taking training short cuts through drug use. Those should really be the lessons learned here.
