A Pathetic Display on Capitol Hill

In a sense, adding to the millions of words already spilled on Roger Clemens, Debbie Clemens, Brian McNamee, Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, not to mention the members of the United States House of Representatives, is a complete waste of time. As a friend said the other day, "the hell with all of them, how does Johan Santana look?"

In a sense, he paraphrased the dying Mercutio who said, "A pox on both your houses." He then went on to ask how Santana was looking in Mets camp.

There is one piece of good news that came out of the circus that passed for a Congressional hearing last Wednesday: It will probably be a long time before we have to endure anything like this again.

You see Congress should never get involved in sports. When it does, it is nothing more than a pathetic play to get publicity. Most of the time, the congressmen involved don't know what they're talking about. They mis-pronounce names, get facts wrong (or maybe they just 'mis-remember,' facts) and generally act star-struck whenever a professional athlete wanders into their midst.

In March, 2005, the same committee that blustered and blundered last week, became the proverbial blind squirrel that found an acorn. Because Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling performed so badly in their testimony, they actually made the committee look good. The good news was that the awful performance by the players helped lead to Major League Baseball finally being forced to toughen its drug-testing policy. The bad news was that it made Congress think more hearings on sports would be a good idea.

What happened last week wasn't even a morality play because that would imply that this was good vs. evil. There was plenty of evil in play, but absolutely no good.

Let's start with Clemens and his band of not-so-merry men (and women). If you want to believe Clemens at this point, you not only have to believe that McNamee, who told the truth about both Pettitte and Knoblauch, chose to make up a complete and detailed fantasy about Clemens. Beyond that you have to believe that Pettitte, his best friend, lied about him, as did Knoblauch. You have to believe that Debbie Clemens let McNamee walk into her house and inject her with HGH without so much as consulting with her husband.

You have to believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and George W. Bush.

Apparently, most of the Republicans on the committee believe in all three. The line that sums up the day for the Republicans came, not surprisingly, from the unspeakably arrogant Dan Burton (R-Indiana) who at one point said to McNamee, "What if all your lies turn out to not be true?"

If Burton wasn't such a lout, that Yogi Berra-ism would be funny. Why exactly he and all but one of the Republicans on the committee decided to throw in with Clemens is hard to say. Maybe it is because George Mitchell is a Democrat? Or because the ex-baseball owner turned President and Clemens are pals? Or maybe Clemens just gave them a lot of cool stuff.

The Democrats don't deserve a pass either, even if they were more skeptical about Clemens than their Republican counterparts. It was, at best, disingenuous of chairman Henry O. Waxman (D-California) to say when the hearings were over and absolutely nothing had been accomplished, that he really didn't want to hold the hearing but did so because Clemens and his legal team pressured him to do so. Since when do private citizens tell Congress what to do? So, if I waltz down to Capitol Hill today and pound my fist on a table, I can get a hearing on why my electric bills are so high?

Waxman and his colleagues wanted their TV time and they got it. For the most part they came across as preening and out-of-their-element, which is pretty much what happens whenever Congress decides to wander into Jock World. It always amazes me that people in the so-called real world, just assume that sports is so simple and easy that they can jump into it, regardless of their lack of understanding or background, anytime they want.