WASHINGTON-- --OK, it's all becoming clear now.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform grilled Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee for nearly five hours yesterday, trying to determine who has been lying and who has been telling the truth in this latest episode of baseball's never-ending steroids soap opera.
And now that the "last" congressional steroids hearing is history, I think any reasonable human being would draw the same conclusion:
Everybody's lying.
The committee members lectured McNamee on his history of misleading authorities and picked apart just about every fact Clemens presented in his own defense. They also took a few veiled shots at baseball commissioner Bud Selig and steroids investigator George Mitchell, further eroding the credibility of the Mitchell Report in a hearing that was widely viewed as an attempt to protect it.
Even the legislators were guilty of a little misdirection, turning the supposedly bipartisan search for answers into a political tug-of-war that seemed to break along party lines.
Frankly, they lost me when Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay ended his soapbox session by asking Clemens which team's jersey he plans to wear when he enters the Hall of Fame.
Clemens, of course, can no longer think that far ahead. He has been doggedly trying to salvage his reputation since McNamee told federal investigators and Mitchell that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. Clemens went on 60 Minutes to tell his side of the story and has disputed McNamee's claims twice under oath, subjecting himself to the possibility of a perjury conviction if any of his sworn testimony can be proven false.
His attorneys reason he wouldn't have put himself in such a precarious position if he weren't being truthful, which might be a compelling argument if he and those same lawyers hadn't tripped over their own feet so many times in the weeks leading up to this supposedly climactic hearing.
They were tripped up again yesterday when committee chairman Henry Waxman revealed Clemens might have tried to influence a witness when the committee requested contact information on his former nanny to sort out conflicting testimony about a 1998 party at the Miami home of former teammate Jose Canseco.
McNamee claimed Clemens was at the party and Clemens insisted he was not, which wouldn't be that big a deal if everyone weren't grasping for any small shred of proof that one side or the other is more credible.
