MY BASEBALL BIAS

Shocking revelation tonight from Ken Davidoff of Newsday. He confirms, through a unnamed source, that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte were never as close as the public was led to believe:

“They were never as close as they were made out to be,” a friend of both said on the condition of anonymity. “They just sort of went along with it in the media, because it was a good story.”

Though Clemens and Pettitte enjoyed working out together, their relationship didn’t extend much beyond that. Clemens is an extrovert, Pettitte an introvert. Clemens enjoyed going out after games on road trips; Pettitte almost always stayed in. Their families aren’t particularly close, although both make the Houston area their full-time residences.

When Clemens sat out the start of the 2006 season, keeping the Astros waiting for months on yet another unretirement, Pettitte joined other veteran teammates in growing annoyed by The Rocket’s prima-donna vacillating.

As Davidoff later mentions, the real showdown will come before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Feb. 13th. Will they play nice, or will Clemens have less than flattering things to say about Pettitte because of the position he was put in?

Regardless, it’s a fascinating revelation.

From the NYT:

Roger Clemens accepted a Congressional invitation to give a deposition to staff members of the House committee investigating performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, his lawyer said Friday.

“Roger looks forward to telling the truth under oath,” Rusty Hardin said Friday. “The date they proposed for us to meet with staff is the actual date we proposed, so we appreciate it.”

Clemens will talk to committee staff members on Jan. 26, two weeks before he is scheduled to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Clemens, his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, and three others were invited to appear in Washington to answer questions beginning next week and to testify under oath on Feb. 13.

In case you missed it, Clemens has also hired Washington lawyer, Lanny A. Breuer, who represented former President Clinton during his impeachment hearings.

I’m still not looking forward to this Capitol Hill escapade a day before Spring Training opens.

Brian McNamee’s character is called into question:

Detectives believed the former New York Yankees trainer who says he injected Roger Clemens with steroids lied to them during the 2001 investigation of a possible rape, according to documents released Tuesday by police.

Police said Brian McNamee denied having sex with a possibly drugged woman in a hotel pool, even though security guards and other witnesses said they saw him.

McNamee hired a New York attorney, who called detectives to arrange an interview.

“I explained to him that his client did talk with me once, and he lied to me,” St. Petersburg Police Detective Donald Crotty wrote in a report.

I also heard someone say today on WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog radio program that Brian McNamee’s son, who is sick, could easily be treated. I’m not sure what he is sick with, but the caller said he just needed to change his diet, alluding to the fact that McNamee was playing on the sympathy of his own son.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Clemens and his lawyers try and break this guy down to discredit everything he has said.

From ESPN.com:

Jay Reisinger, the lawyer for New York pitcher Andy Pettitte, told 1050 ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand that it is “premature” to say if Pettitte will attend next Wednesday’s hearings on Capitol Hill.

Reisinger, who also represented Sammy Sosa at the 2005 steroid hearings before the same congressional committee, said he expects to soon hear what the committee’s plans are for Pettitte. When he gets those answers, he will discuss the options available to Pettitte.

I think Pettitte needs to show up. Answer the committee’s questions and get ready for the 2008 season. Don’t go into spring training having to answer questions about why you ducked the dopes Capitol Hill.

Now McNamee’s lawyer is pissed off.

From the Daily News:

“What does (Clemens) do, he calls him back with his lawyer in the room and a tape recorder going,” McNamee attorney Richard Emery told the Daily News last night. “He wants to play that game, he’s going to get buried. I have no compunction about putting him in jail.

“This is war.”

This whole thing is about to get down-right ugly.

The Press Release from McNamee’s Lawyer can be found here.

Well, was that was a crazy 24-hour news cycle as it pertained to Clemens or what? In case you missed anything, here’s the timeline:

• Sunday night: 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace

• Monday morning: Word breaks that Clemens has filed a defamation suit against McNamee

• Monday afternoon: Clemens press conference

Brian McNamee hasn’t exactly sat on the sidelines while Clemens has lambasted him in the media. John Heyman of SI.com landed an exclusive interview with McNamee while he watched the Wallace/Clemens interview Sunday night. Some of what he told Heyman is quite revealing:

“Roger was in no way an abuser of steroids,” McNamee said. “He never took them through our tough winter workouts. And he never took them in spring training, when the days are longest. He took them in late July, August, and never for more than four to six weeks, max … it wasn’t that frequent.

“Within the culture of what was going on, he was just a small part of it. A lot of guys did it. You can’t take away the work Roger did. You can’t take away the fact that he worked out as hard as anybody.”

Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com has one of the better dissections of the McNamee/Clemens phone call where he looks at “Clemens logic versus reality”.  Alan Schwarz of the New York Times has more on their “frayed friendship”. Schwarz also has a great piece on just how far players are willing to go to get an edge.

Jim Baumbach over at Newsday explains how Clemens flat-out lied during his interview with Wallace.

Jerry Crasnick breaks down the 60 Minutes interview and offers up this bit of wisdom:

News flash: The steroid saga is a complicated mess. So let’s take the Clemens interview for what it’s worth. If he’s telling the truth, he got his chance to vent. And if he’s lying, he’s out on a very tenuous limb.

Couldn’t agree more with Jerry. Also, I though Wallace, for all the grief he received for being on rather friendly terms with Clemens, did an admirable job. The guy looks great 89 and can still pose tough questions in a persuasive manner.

Buster Olney writes that Clemens can sue whomever he wants but his name will forever be linked with the Mitchell Report. In the end, Olney explains, it won’t matter what he says:

There is nothing that he can say or do that can change the reality that his name is in the Mitchell report, and his reputation is damaged forever. But he has chosen to fight the accusations, in a battle in which he probably can never achieve complete success, and the stakes will continue to go up, day by day.

If you missed Monday’s press conference, Richard Sandomir’s piece in the NYT’s is a must-read. Here is a snippet:

This was live, raw, sour Roger, the one you get in a foul mood, and more riveting than the comparatively polite Clemens who appeared opposite Mike Wallace a night earlier on “60 Minutes.”

Here was the great, brush-cut Rocket character, filled with denials about the accusations by Brian McNamee, his former personal trainer, and chesty indignation bordering on intimidation. There was his wisecracking lawyer, Rusty Hardin, who sounded astonishingly like Jerry Jones, and passed Clemens a note saying, “Lighten up,” as if they were in junior high math.

Andy Pettitte hired a new lawyer for his impending visit to capitol hill.

Hank Steinbrenner weighed-in (big surprise, right?) and said there shouldn’t be a “rush to judgment”. He added:

“I thought that the press conference spoke for itself,” Steinbrenner told The AP on Monday night outside of Legends Field in Tampa, Fla. “I thought the media commentary after the press conference was over was a little harsh. Too much rush to judgment in this country.

“As far as whether he’s telling the truth or not, I have no clue. But I’m not going to say, well, he’s lying, like everybody on TV did after he was done.”

“Everybody, the media, all said, ‘Oh, he’s got to sue,’” Steinbrenner said. “(Barry) Bonds never sued. Everybody said, ‘Why not?’ Well, this guy is suing and now they still don’t believe him. You’ve got to start to wonder at some point. I don’t rush to judgment. That’s the big thing with me. I don’t do that, and that’s the exact term for it, rush to judgment.”

MLB will enact a few recommendations from the Mitchell report regarding clubhouse security.

For what it’s worth, a former FBI-agent thinks that Clemens was less than truthful during the 60 Minutes interview.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’m sure there will be more links to pass on tomorrow.

Here is the audio from Clemen’s press conference on Monday:

Listen below to the McNamee/Clemens phone call:

Excerpts of the conversation can be found here.

Click play below and listen to highlights from last night’s 60 Minutes interview:

A full transcript can be found here.

I’ve posted the Mike Wallace/Roger Clemens 60 Minutes Interview below for those of you who missed it.

Summary: Clemens is pissed-off!

PART I:

And here is PART II:

Video was found on YouTube.

Roger Clemens means business. Last night, he filed a defamation suit against Brian McNamee:

Clemens filed the suit Sunday night in Harris County District Court in Texas, listing 15 alleged statements McNamee made to the baseball drug investigator George Mitchell. Clemens claimed the statements were “untrue and defamatory.”

“According to McNamee, he originally made his allegations to federal authorities after being threatened with criminal prosecution if he didn’t implicate Clemens,” according to the 14-page petition, obtained early Monday by The Associated Press.

You can download the document here.

More on this to come…