“What do you want me to do?” Brian McNamee asked Roger Clemens that question — or variations of it — 21 times during a 17-minute taped conversation. He never really got an answer.
A recording of last Friday’s telephone call between Clemens’ former trainer and the seven-time Cy Young Award winner was played at Clemens’ news conference Monday, the first time he faced a group of reporters since McNamee’s accusations were made public in the Mitchell report Dec. 13.
“What do you want me to do? I’ll go to jail, I’ll do whatever you want,” McNamee said.
“I need somebody to tell the truth, Mac,” Clemens told him.
Never, though, did Clemens angrily confront McNamee during the call nor did he accuse the trainer of lying when he told Mitchell he injected Clemens at least 16 times with steroids and human growth hormone in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
Asked why Clemens never directly answered the “what do you want me to do” question, his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said: “The last thing Roger wanted, just as we did, was any suggestion that we were trying to interfere or coerce a federal witness. So, yeah, all he kept saying (was) nothing. Except you hear him throughout saying, ‘Tell the truth.’ ”
Under state law in New York and Texas, only one party has to give consent for a phone conversation to be taped. In this case, it was Clemens.
Hardin said that because McNamee didn’t deny Clemens’ claims that he never used steroids, it amounted to proof Clemens was telling the truth.
Late Sunday, Clemens filed a defamation suit against McNamee in Texas state court. One of McNamee’s lawyers, Richard Emery, said his client probably will sue Clemens in New York.
After the tape was played, Clemens took questions from reporters before testily ending the session on the subject of the Hall of Fame. “Do you think I played my career because I’m worried about the Hall of Fame?” he told a room filled with many potential voters. “You keep your vote. I don’t need the Hall of Fame to justify that I put my butt on the line and I worked my tail off, and I defy anybody to say I did it by cheating or taking any shortcuts, OK?”
