It’s time for some sports blogging. Earlier this week I watched the entire Roger Clemens congressional hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform live on ESPN. It was quite an ordeal and has left me with a lot to talk about.
No winners emerged from the hearing.
Some reputations took less of a hit, but no one came out looking better than they went in. The list of losers includes Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee, Attorneys for Roger Clemens, Charles Scheeler, the Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball, and several members of the Oversight committee.
I’ll run down a few key points.
Andy Pettitte
If there was anyone who came close to coming out a winner from the whole fiasco, it was Andy. Time and time again his sworn testimony was brought up after a litany of proclamations of his honesty. Several committee members hammered on the point that Andy is an honest man, that they’ve heard Mr. Pettitte is honest and frequently asked Roger Clemens if Pettitte was honest. Once committee member referenced Andy as a man of God, using that as further proof of the validity of Pettitte’s statements.
Despite all of the Pettitte worship going on, one little minor detail seems to have gotten brushed under the table. ESPN.com, during the hearing, ran a new story. Andy Pettitte, the same Andy Pettitte who previously said he used HGH for only two days back in 2002, now admits he used it again in 2004. So right there during the hearing where Andy is being praised as the moral authority and pinnacle of trustworthiness, it comes out that he lied and hid the truth very recently.
The excuse offered was that he received the drugs from his father, and it was only out of loyalty to his dad that he lied.
Andy’s entire story is rather convenient, and represents the easiest way out for someone who has gotten caught. HGH is associated with slightly less stigma than steroids and represents a lesser of two evils. Also, admitting to only one time use (and later two times) is much better than continuous use. So now Andy admits to only the barest minimum, and comes out looking like a hero because he had the courage to come forward with the truth. If he had denied the allegations, there would have been much public stigmatization and he would have been painted as a liar and a coward. If he had used more substances, more frequently and admitted to it, he would be painted as a disreputable drug user. Note: I have no evidence whatsoever that Andy did anything more than he is admitting to and am not accusing him of anything. That last sentence is describing a purely hypothetical situation.
Brian McNamee
McNamee definitely took the most abuse during the hearing. Watching him answer the questions he was asked gave me the sense that he was definitely ashamed of the answers he had to give. His credibility was attacked directly and repeatedly. Several inconsistencies in prior sworn testimony were pointed out and he flat out admitted he was lying at the time.
Brian was asked several times if he was coerced into testifying and if he had any sort of deal in place to avoid or lessen charges against him. He repeatedly stated that there was nothing of the sort in place or in the works. He also swore that he had no contacts with anyone about publishing a book, memoir, or other account of his experience.
McNamee was brutally attacked for his degree, a supposed PhD which he touted in the past that turned out to be nothing more than a flimsy piece of paper from an online diploma factory. At no time did he actually sit in a classroom while obtaining this PhD.
One particularly inappropriate committee member, clearly showing partiality toward Clemens, spent his entire time allotment getting McNamee to say out loud that he was a drug dealer. It played out like a scene from a bad movie drama.
In the end, McNamee’s claims about Pettitte and Chuck Knoblach have been corroborated by those players. This leaves the question of why would he tell the truth about those two, but lie about Clemens?
Lastly, McNamee wasn’t evasive during the hearing. He answered the questions, even if the answers reflected poorly on his person. He also made direct eye contact with committee members, and appeared remorseful and ashamed. His body language didn’t raise many red flags and provided us with little evidence of deceit.
Roger Clemens
Clemens was probably the biggest loser in all of this. I’m very surprised that his lawyers and he insisted on having this hearing, as he probably would have been better off just having the committee issuing a report and then later giving a prepared statement to the public himself. By appearing before the committee, he opens himself up for perjury charges, and submits himself to direct questioning.
Before the hearing took place, Roger lobbied with many members of the committee, meeting with them ahead of time. The exact details of these conversations aren’t available, but I’ve heard this is not an uncommon occurrence. His efforts may have paid off somewhat, as quite a few committee members praised him for his hard work or community service or appeared blatantly partial to his cause.
Roger was caught several times with inconsistencies in his sworn statements. When directly confronted, he often avoided the question and provided no answers to account for discrepancies.
In regards to Andy Pettitte’s testimony that he spoke with Roger about HGH, Roger repeatedly claimed that Andy “misremembered” the conversation. Roger insists that Pettitte is honest and at no point did he ever accuse Andy of lying.
Roger was tripped up at one point by claiming he never spoke with Andy about HGH, and then later that he did speak about HGH, but it was only his wife’s prior use of the substance. The dates his wife supposedly used HGH were after the date of the alleged conversation, and Clemens could not provide adequate explanation for this discrepancy.
Clemens was later questioned about his nanny, which raised yet another controversy. Apparently the committee contacted Mr. Clemens through his attorneys and asked to be provided with contact information for his prior nanny, and it was requested that Roger’s attorneys not contact the nanny until the committee had a chance to speak with her. It took several days for the contact information to be provided to the committee and during that time, a private investigator hired by Clemens’ legal team and Roger himself apparently contacted the nanny.
There was also a fair amount of controversy over Roger’s initial contact with the staff working on the Mitchell report. The implication was that Roger did not initially come forward and did not respond to initial attempts to contact him. There was quite a bit of wavering non-committal answering by Clemens, and the bulk of his response was that he is a very public person and Bud Selig or Senator Mitchell could have easily found him. The implication was that Roger seemed to expect the commissioner of baseball to personally track him down.
Throughout the whole interview, Clemens appeared nervous and fidgety, frequently licking his lips and casting his gaze downward. For the most part he avoided direct eye contact with his questioners. An interesting point is that oftentimes Roger would glance to his left, which people usually do when remembering sounds. During the nanny line of questioning, Roger started glancing to the right, which can indicate a person constructing or making up sounds. This in no way constitutes evidence of any sort, it is only presented for educational and entertainment purposes. Several other professional body language experts on MSNBC and ESPN pointed out Clemens’ fidgets, lip-licking, body adjustments, long pauses, a stutter, downward glances, red face, wrinkled forehead and uncontrolled outbursts, all of which can indicate defensiveness and deception. Attention was also drawn to the fact he said he was being accused of something he wasn’t guilty of, rather than something he didn’t do. It’s a subtle point but an interesting one, if you were asked if you used steroids, would you reply “No, I didn’t use steroids” or “No, I am not guilty of using steroids”. Clemens rarely provided direct answers to questions, instead choosing to dance around the issue or give a long-winded unrelated answer. He spent a good deal of time explaining how great he is, singing his own praises and touting his own importance. There was definitely a sense that Roger wanted to let his reputation speak for him rather than his actual answers.
The bottom line for Roger Clemens is that he was caught several times making inconsistent statements, and he was unable to reasonably rectify these. He practically admitted to ignoring the instructions of the committee. All in all, Clemens established nothing, and only brought question to his overall credibility.
Roger Clemens’ attorneys took a hit for not preparing their client adequately for the questions they should have seen coming, and most importantly for being caught dragging their feet, delaying cooperation and disregarding a committee’s request regarding the nanny incident.
The Mitchell Report
The overall consensus was that the Mitchell report was a good thing and for the most part, accurate. There was one particular line of questioning directed at Charles Scheeler, who was an investigator for the Mitchell report, where the details of the Canseco barbeque (where Clemens was alleged to have attended and spoken with Jose about steroids) were called into question. There was conflicting testimony that contradicted this portion of the Mitchell report. When Scheeler was asked about this, he maintained the validity of the report and said the reports authors weren’t responsible for verifying certain claims when conflicting evidence became available. This brief response caught the questioning committee member by surprise and was eventually dropped. Not much has been made of this statement, but despite it’s brevity, definitely raised questions about the integrity of the Mitchell report. If more time had been spent clarifying the comment and the exact details a possible reasonable explanation could have been found. As it stands, we are left with a very damning soundbite.
The Oversight Committee
Several of the members of the committee demonstrated a firm grasp of the situation and raised relevant and important questions. One member showed that he had done a fair amount of independent research into the matter. The behavior of a few members of the committee was deplorable, and reflected poorly on the committee as a whole. The behavior was so bad that at the end of the proceedings, Chairman Waxman directly issued an apology to Mr. McNamee.
I didn’t keep a running tally of who showed what bias, but several reporters have concluded that the committee members were divided down Democratic and Republican party lines. What I noticed is that a few definitely had a bias and tried to validate one person’s answers while attempting to discredit the other. Some favored McNamee and some favored Clemens. The attacks on McNamee were quite harsh at times, and several were over the line and frankly unprofessional. One member seemed to be focused only on calling McNamee an ex-cop turned drug dealer. Another insisted on injecting callous personal opinions and snide remarks out loud but to himself. Yet another was quick to use the pre-planned joke of PhD standing for “pile it high and deep”. The joke was clearly not spontaneous, not funny, and not germane.
The committee members who behaved unprofessionally were in the minority but any doubts as to the appropriateness of their behavior were answered when Waxman issued an apology for their behavior.
Major League Baseball
There was a definite implication by Mr. McNamee that people involved in the players union and on the part of the owners knew about the steroid problem and deliberately took steps to make sure the problem did not become public. One astute committee member focused on this point and suggested to the chairman that this was a serious issue that the committee should look into.
I can’t stress enough the importance of this. The idea that a union representative and MLB owners were discussing finding a way around steroid testing should not go unnoticed or, if true, unpunished.
Conclusions
Obviously, with directly conflicting testimonies, someone was lying. I suspect there won’t be enough evidence for a conviction of perjury. At this point, every single person providing testimony has credibility issues. McNamee has been caught lying many times and has admitted to lying. Pettitte has withheld testimony regarding his 2005 HGH use. There were several inconsistencies with various sworn statements Clemens made.
There was no hard evidence or proof of guilt or innocence and I doubt we’ll ever see any. It was a sad day for baseball and a sad day for many of the people involved in the hearing.
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