Advertisement

New details emerge from both sides

Share
Times Staff Writer

The congressional committee showdown between Roger Clemens and his former trainer Brian McNamee produced new revelations in their ongoing exchange of opposing statements about whether the trainer injected the seven-time Cy Young Award winner with performance-enhancing drugs.

Among the new subjects, which predictably produced further disagreement, are as follows:

Pettitte disclosures

Andy Pettitte’s sworn 105-page deposition made the claim that his longtime teammate and friend Clemens told him in 1999 he had used human growth hormone. Pettitte said he was compelled to tell Congress the truth because one day he’ll have to give “an account to God.”

The committee praised Pettitte’s honesty, even as he admitted a new revelation about using HGH himself for a second time in 2004. McNamee had reported in former Sen. George Mitchell’s report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball that he had injected Pettitte twice in 2002, injections Pettitte had already confirmed.

Advertisement

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)said near the end of the hearing, “If I walked in here even-steven, the person I believe most is Andy Pettitte. He swings the balance to Mr. McNamee.”

Pettitte elaborated in his deposition that he discussed Clemens’ HGH claim again in 2005, when congressional hearings were called for Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and others. Clemens denied then that he’d ever shared that information with Pettitte, and said he was talking about his wife, Debbie’s, HGH use -- which emerged Wednesday as a 2003 incident.

“I was like, ‘Oh,’ just kind of walked out,” Pettitte said in his deposition. “I wasn’t going to argue with him over it.”

Pettitte told his wife, Laura, both contradictory Clemens stories after they happened, and she too provided a deposition corroborating what the New York Yankees left-hander had heard from his boyhood idol.

The Jose Canseco pool party

The report by former Sen. George Mitchell that included McNamee’s original drug-use claims against Clemens told of the pitcher’s attendance at a lunch party Canseco threw at his Miami home in June 1998. McNamee said he saw Clemens attend a meeting inside the home with Canseco and another individual. The report noted Canseco had told Clemens how to “cycle” and “stack” steroids, and McNamee said he was soon after approached by the pitcher about steroids and asked to help inject the pitcher.

Canseco has provided an affidavit saying Clemens was not at the party, but at the urging of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a Clemens nanny who McNamee said attended the party wearing a “peach bikini with board shorts” emerged this week.

Advertisement

Committee Chairman Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) reported Wednesday, however, that Clemens had located the nanny and met her at his Katy, Texas, home Sunday, telling her, “The reason that you don’t remember that party is because I wasn’t there.” The nanny later confirmed to Congress that Clemens was at the Canseco home “at the relevant period,” Waxman said.

Waxman said he was troubled that Clemens was possibly trying to “influence” the witness.

“I’m hurt by that statement,” said Clemens, who had previously told ranking committee member Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) he golfed that day and didn’t “remember the party.”

After a recess, Clemens said, “I’m not totally positive I wouldn’t drop off my wife at the home, but I was asked about [attending] the party. Could I have gone by the house? Sure, I could’ve, but I was on my way to the ballgame. I know one thing: I wasn’t huddled with somebody trying to do a drug deal.”

Debbie Clemens’ HGH injection from McNamee

In his deposition to the committee, McNamee told of injecting Clemens’ wife, Debbie, with HGH in 2003, with Roger Clemens looking on.

“She was . . . very into the Hollywood scene,” McNamee said in his deposition. “I think she was finding out that people in Hollywood were taking growth hormone and how great it was for women and body fat and youthful appearances and such.”

Before the injection, McNamee said Debbie Clemens said to her husband, “I can’t believe you’re going to let him do this,” to which McNamee said Roger Clemens answered, “He injects me, why can’t he inject you?”

Advertisement

Yet Roger Clemens testified he was not present at the time of his wife’s injection, and “found out later in the evening. . . . Prior to [McNamee] injecting my wife, we had no discussion about HGH. We never discussed HGH in detail.”

On the heels of admissions of performance-enhancing drug use by Pettitte and former New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch after being named by McNamee, however, Debbie Clemens became another to confirm McNamee’s accusation.

Roger Clemens read a statement from his wife, in which she said, “ . . . [McNamee] said it was not illegal and would be good for youthfulness. He gave me a test shot. I had circulation problems with itching.”

Said Roger Clemens: “She has been broken up over this; [she] feels like a pawn in his game.”

The abscess

In his first season together with McNamee, with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998, Clemens developed a “palpable mass” on his left buttocks that was treated by the Blue Jays medical staff with an MRI exam.

“It was in the exact same location that I would give the injection” of the steroid Winstrol, McNamee said in his deposition to the committee.

Advertisement

Team doctor Ron Taylor said that he had never seen a B-12 shot create such a reaction, and McNamee speculated in testimony Wednesday that the injection “could’ve been given too fast.”

McNamee recalled Clemens becoming upset with the abscess injury, testifying Clemens “threw [the Winstrol] in my locker,” and told the trainer to “get rid of this stuff.”

--

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

Advertisement