Shameless 'Titans' Atop The Hill

What were Roger Clemens and his attorneys thinking with their cockamamie broadcast-based defense strategy that now clearly has backfired on a bully of a ballplayer they surely had to know was going to be so media-unfriendly?

Couldn't Rusty Hardin, Clemens's colorful and eminently quotable lawyer, see that hardball side of Clemens when his client first stood in front of the cameras at a Houston news conference shortly after the Mitchell Report on the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs came out in mid-December?

An intimidating presence on the mound for so many years, Clemens spent most of that memorable session snarling surly answers back at the media invited to attend, as if they were a gaggle of .225 hitters not worthy of his best stuff. Eventually he stormed away from the podium in a self-righteous huff, virtually guaranteeing this grumpy old pitcher would be the lead story on SportsCenter morning, noon and night and get huge play on national and local newscasts around the country in the same news cycle, and several more.

As I watched Clemens's performance that day, I couldn't help but feel that fans rarely allowed in the inner sanctums of big-time sports were actually witnessing what many in the media have seen in locker rooms for years -- not-so-friendly, big-time athletes acting like petulant children when things aren't quite going their way.

I'd never personally been that up close and personal with Clemens before, but I've certainly seen his type, going all the way back to the time in the early 1970s when Redskins quarterback Billy Kilmer refused to talk to a scrum of reporters around his locker after a game unless I left the group and went elsewhere.

Apparently, he had been unhappy about something I had written that week. And when I declined his request to leave the group, he got more than a little belligerent and we nearly came to blows. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed at the time, and we both have since been able to laugh about it now that Kilmer is happily retired in South Florida. Last time I saw him, in fact, he told me to call him the next time I was in town so we could go out and play golf.

But we digress.

Clemens could have used a few cool heads of his own to shake him by the lapels and prevent him from appearing in that initial press conference in Houston and then again on Capitol Hill last week for another even more contentious Congressional hearing. His sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform made him look even worse than some of the grandstanding Congressman grilling him for 4? hours of often riveting, often revolting must-see national TV.

According to Congressman Henry Waxman, who chaired the hearing, it was Clemens and his people who insisted on appearing before Congress that day to give his side of the story. Waxman told the New York Times the day after the hearing that he probably shouldn't have yielded to their request because the committee already had enough sworn affidavits and closed-door testimony from most of the key players and that it ultimately was a mistake to hold the hearing in the first place.

For Clemens, going to Washington was a killer mistake, preceded by his decision days before the hearing to pay lobbying visits -- not to mention signing autographs and posing for pictures -- with many of the Congressmen on the committee and members of their staffs, roughly akin to a defendant meeting and greeting his jurors before the day before the trial.

Under oath, Clemens was not to be believed. He hemmed and hawed and nervously licked his lips, using words like mis-heard and mis-remembered and generally leaving the impression that basically he was lying through his teeth.

Brian McNamee, his former trainer and very former friend who allegedly injected him with HGH and steroids, seemed far more credible in his testimony, even if he admitted he had lied before, mainly to protect himself and his athlete pals and clients from possible suspensions or prosecutions.