January 7, 2008

Clemens on 60 Minutes -- Not Believable


I caught most of Mike Wallace's 60 Minutes interview with Roger Clemens last night. The overall impression that came through is that the guy is lying through his teeth. Let's walk through what Clemens is asking us to believe:

  • Brian McNamee is a steroid dealer. If he wasn't, he'd have no reason to cooperate with the feds and name names.
  • McNamee is telling the truth about injecting Pettitte with HGH. Andy Pettitte has admitted this. Keep in mind that Clemens and Pettitte are BFF.
  • Clemens had McNamee inject him with lidocaine and B-12. Clemens didn't admit this until last night's interview, why?
  • McNamee is lying about injecting Clemens with steroids.
So we have a known steroid trafficker, who injected Clemens's best friend with HGH, then confessed to the feds to avoid jail time. As a condition of his deal, if he provided any false information to the feds, he'd face prosecution. The big question remaining after the interview is Why would McNamee lie about Clemens if he was telling the truth about everyone else? Clearly selling out Andy Pettitte would have been good enough to get McNamee off the hook. So why would he risk going to jail by adding in a lie about Roger Clemens? Clemens's explanation doesn't pass the smell test.

3 Responses:

"ben" said...

J-Red:

Clemens is filing his defamation suit. More believable, less believable, the same?

I guess Clemens decided as long as he created this huge mess, he may as well go all out.

What happens if you file a defamation suit, and then it is proven that the accuser is the one lying? Counter suit, or are there other consequences?

J-Red said...

Michael McCann (now with CNNSI, also with www.sportslawblog.com) has a good analysis. He said a lot of the same things I said about McNamee's potential suit, but he also had the power of CNNSI behind him and fleshed it out nicely.

Here is the link.

I'll comment fully tonight after work.

KGoon1590 said...

There's no way he can win the defamation suit. He has to prove malice and I suspect if he continues to refuse testimony except to Mike Wallace, he'll have a hard time saying the statements aren't true.

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