Shameless 'Titans' Atop The Hill

McNamee, sitting at the other end of the table from Clemens, actually came off as a somewhat sympathetic figure, a man now apparently broke and ruined, even if the testimony, interviews with the committee and statements from other clients like Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch indicated that he was not lying about juicing Clemens.

Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings at one point asked Clemens that if McNamee was telling the truth about providing HGH for Pettitte and Knoblauch, both of whom have confirmed it, how was it that "when it comes to you (Clemens), he's lying?" Clemens never answered him, going off instead on a tangent involving Pettitte and his use of HGH.

Pettitte, who did not appear at the hearing but spoke to committee staff and members in a private session the week before, clearly seemed like the biggest winner last week, even if he did throw his old pal and training partner Clemens under the team bus. But unlike the still defiant Clemens, at least he came clean, and did it again during a press conference yesterday when he reported to the Yankees' training camp in Tampa and publicly apologized profusely for using HGH.

Perhaps if slugger Mark McGwire had admitted using steroids during a similar Congressional hearing before the same committee in 2005, he'd be in the Hall of Fame by now. Instead, he lives mostly in seclusion behind gated walls and may never be voted in. If sprinter Marion Jones had admitted using steroids right from the start, she might well be preparing to run in the Beijing Olympics this summer instead of going to jail.

We Americans tend to be mostly forgiving, particularly if time is served, sincere apologies are offered and past mistakes are fully acknowledged with some contrition.

But we tend to shun those who deny, deny, deny, then delay, delay, delay hoping it might all go away. It never did for Pete Rose. It probably won't for McGwire, and it may well be going in the very same wrong direction for Clemens, the biggest loser of all last week on Capitol Hill.

By the way, No. 2 on that same loser list would have to be Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana, who held Clemens up as a "titan in baseball," and then, along with many of his Republican colleagues on the panel, tried to discredit McNamee in a hearing that somehow became purely partisan.

Burton was the most vocal, bellowing from his sky-high horse to McNamee at one point, "you, with all these lies which are not true, are destroying (Clemens's) reputation...This is really disgusting...Lie after lie after lie...I know one thing I don't believe, and that's you."

Then again, maybe it takes one slime-bucket to know another one.

After all, according to published reports, this is the same man who, while married to his first wife in the 1980s, fathered an illegitimate child after an affair with an employee of an Indiana state agency. He's also been accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, including the alleged groping of a lobbyist from Planned Parentood in the mid-1990s when she visited his office.

Salon, the internet magazine, reported in a 1995 profile on Burton that several sources indicated the Congressman "has also maintained sexual relationships with women on his Congressional and campaign payrolls."

This is the same Dan Burton widely criticized by his home town Indianapolis Star newspaper for missing countless votes on the House floor while playing in a number of charity golf tournaments on the PGA Tour.