Clemens Testifies
Roger Clemens answered questions from Richard Emery, the lawyer for Brian McNamee, about how he felt about not being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Video by Richard Emery on Publish Date November 12, 2014.As Bud Selig prepares to depart as Major League Baseball’s longtime commissioner, he is leaving a few items behind.
In Florida, for instance, Alex Rodriguez continues to create unpleasant distractions for the sport as he proceeds with his plans to rejoin the Yankees for the 2015 season.
In California, Barry Bonds is making headway in his effort to have his obstruction-of-justice conviction overturned by a federal appeals court.
And in Brooklyn, Roger Clemens and his trainer turned accuser, Brian McNamee, will again be in federal court, in the spring, if their lawyers cannot reach a settlement in McNamee’s defamation suit.
Clemens did not testify in 2012 when he was tried and acquitted in federal court in Washington on charges that he lied to Congress when he said he did not use banned substances, as McNamee had said he did.
But that was not the end of the matter. In McNamee’s defamation suit, he contends that Clemens damaged his reputation by accusing him of being both a liar and mentally unstable in response to his assertions about Clemens.
If the case goes to trial in Brooklyn, perhaps during the 2015 season, Clemens will be called to the witness stand. That could attract attention that will leave baseball officials grimacing.
“I can call Clemens to the stand, and I intend to call him as the first witness,” said Richard Emery, the lawyer who has helped represent McNamee for much of his long battle with Clemens.
In several interviews, Emery made clear that he and McNamee, whom he described as “virtually destitute,” were open to a financial settlement of the case.
For now, however, Emery is proceeding as if that will not happen. In July, Clemens sat in a Manhattan law office for seven hours as he was deposed by Emery.
Emery made a transcript of that deposition available to The New York Times, along with a video recording, with small parts redacted because of confidentiality agreements. Over the seven hours, Clemens did not say much that he had not said before. He continued to dispute suggestions that he took performance-enhancers while playing in the major leagues.
For those who have followed the matter, the deposition covered familiar territory: the conversations that Clemens and his former Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte may or may not have had about human growth hormone; the H.G.H. injection that McNamee gave to Clemens’s wife, Debbie; and Clemens’s insistence that McNamee did inject him, but with vitamin B12 and lidocaine rather than banned substances.
At one point in the deposition, Emery revisited an issue that has long proved vexing for Clemens. From the start, with the publication of George J. Mitchell’s report in 2007, McNamee has stated that he also gave performance-enhancers to Pettitte and another former Yankees teammate of Clemens’s, Chuck Knoblauch. Neither Pettitte nor Knoblauch has disputed McNamee’s claims; only Clemens has.
“O.K.,” Emery said in his questioning of Clemens. “Now can — can you think of any reason whatsoever that Andy Pettitte — that Brian McNamee would name Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch and be lying about you but telling the truth about them?”
Clemens, who won 354 regular-season games and seven Cy Young Awards in his 24-year major league career, said he could not provide an explanation.
Document
Roger Clemens Deposition Transcript
The transcript of the July, 2014 deposition of Roger Clemens in the Clemens-Brian McNamee defamation lawsuit.
At another point, Emery brought up a 2006 Los Angeles Times article, which turned out to be inaccurate, in which the major league pitcher Jason Grimsley was said to identify Clemens, Pettitte and several other players as drug users.
Citing email exchanges at the time between Clemens and McNamee in which Grimsley was a main subject, Emery noted one in which McNamee angrily disputed any notion of “being a rat or flipping on you or any one of my clients.”
“What do you think he meant?” Emery said to Clemens. “Doesn’t a rat have something to rat somebody out about?”
“I’m not sure what he meant there,” Clemens said. “Again, I thought he was directing that toward if I lost any sponsors or. ... ”
Emery persisted, saying, “Did you ever ask him what he meant when he said flipping on you or rat — ratting you out?”
Clemens said, “I don’t believe I did.”
Clemens’s entanglement with McNamee, and the legal problems that ensued, have damaged his chances of being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In his two years on the ballot, he has received less than half the votes needed for induction in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many baseball writers, who do the voting, clearly see Clemens as someone linked to performance-enhancers — even if he was acquitted of perjury.
Asked by Emery, in the deposition, if he believed he should be in the Hall, Clemens responded several times that it was not a concern of his.
“I’m kind of indifferent to the Hall of Fame,” he said at one point.
Later in the deposition, he contended that he was already part of Cooperstown despite his rejection in the balloting. “As a full-fledged player, I have articles and great stuff in the Hall of Fame now,” he said.
Emery said the deposition, which he called a “home run” for McNamee, left him confident that the defamation suit would succeed if it went to trial.
“A Brooklyn jury is going to consider Clemens completely delusionary and not believe a word he says, in my opinion,” Emery said. He also maintained that the different standards of proof in criminal and civil cases made it easier for McNamee to prevail over Clemens in a trial.
“In Washington, when he was acquitted, the jury had to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and he never had to testify,” Emery said of Clemens. “In Brooklyn, all we have to show is that by any common-sense standard, he is not telling the truth when he denies using performance-enhancing drugs. And he has to take the stand and face the jury.”
In response, Rusty Hardin, who has represented Clemens throughout the dispute with McNamee, said the suit was “perhaps the silliest one” he had been involved in.
“A guy who admitted he was selling drugs to people says his reputation was hurt because one of the people he said he was selling drugs to denies that he gave him the drugs?” Hardin said.
He added: “All that Emery is trying to do is say, ‘We’re going to embarrass Roger in any way the court will allow us, so give us some money and we will keep that from happening.’ Roger is never going to pay a dime. A settlement would be perceived as Roger acknowledging he did it, and he didn’t do it, and he’s not going to pay someone money for ruining his reputation.”
As the dispute plays out, one person who will not be involved is Selig, who will depart his office at the end of January but whose legacy will be affected by how prevalent doping remains in baseball after he is gone.
As far back as January 2010, after Mark McGwire’s acknowledgment that he had used performance-enhancers, Selig said that baseball’s “steroid era” was effectively over. But as new cases like the Biogenesis scandal still emerge and old names — like Rodriguez, Bonds and Clemens — still linger, that is not exactly the case.
“When the commissioner said the steroid era was over, he was referring to a period of time when there was widespread use with no drug testing or discipline,” Pat Courtney, the chief spokesman for Major League Baseball, said Wednesday. “Baseball now has the toughest drug-testing and discipline program in professional sports.”
He added, “We remain undeterred.”
The same, perhaps, could be said for McNamee and Clemens and their lawyers. And Clemens on the witness stand in the spring or summer might overshadow whoever is on the mound that day in the majors.