King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Roger Clemens makes public a strange phone conversation with his accuser. Plus: LSU beats Ohio State for BCS title.

Read more: Drugs, Sports, Baseball, Football, Steroids, College Football, Roger Clemens, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

Jan. 8, 2008 | At his news conference in Houston Monday, Roger Clemens played a recording of a phone conversation he'd had Friday with his accuser, Brian McNamee. McNamee is the personal trainer who told former Sen. George Mitchell that he'd injected both Clemens and his teammate Andy Pettitte with performance-enhancing drugs.

It was a deeply strange moment, mostly because it was a deeply strange phone call. Clemens recorded it, and he said attorney Rusty Hardin and two investigators from Hardin's office were with him when he made the call. It's unclear if McNamee knew the call, which he'd solicited, was being recorded, but he mentioned the possibility that somebody else might be listening, and said he couldn't open up to Clemens the way he wanted to.

What Clemens and McNamee did not sound like were a man wrongfully accused of using illegal drugs and the fellow who'd sold him out. Clemens kept referring to how upset everybody in his family is and saying somebody needed to tell the truth. McNamee kept talking about how bad he felt for Clemens and how the whole situation had devastated McNamee and his family, including a seriously ill 10-year-old son. He repeatedly asked Clemens, "What do you want me to do?"

They sounded like they were commiserating over some natural disaster that had befallen them, like a flood.

Hardin, Clemens' attorney, presented the tape as pointing to Clemens' innocence. After it played, he said, "You notice all during this tape, when Roger says he didn't do it, McNamee never says, 'Yes you did.' When Roger says, 'I just want the truth to come out,' McNamee never corrects that. McNamee never says to him on this tape, 'Yes you did, Roger. You did.' When Roger says he didn't use steroids 'and you know it,' McNamee never says, 'Yes you did.'"

That's true. Then again, as visibly angry as Clemens was at the assembled media for reporting what McNamee said -- he eventually cut the session short and stormed off -- he never sounded angry at McNamee for saying it in the first place.

McNamee kept asking that question, "What do you want me to do?" Clemens, in roundabout fashion, answered that he wanted McNamee to tell the truth. But while McNamee said, "I'll do whatever I can do to help," he never clearly came close to saying he'd recant his statement in the Mitchell Report that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, although he did offer at one point to go to jail for Clemens. That may have been an overture toward a recant.

After Clemens said, "I just want the truth out there" and that his family is hurting, McNamee said, "The pain this is causing you and me and everybody is nonsense. You know, Brian [Jr., McNamee's ailing son], your kids, my kids, they have nothing to do with this. The truth is the truth. It is what it is."

McNamee also said, "I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too." At another point in the conversation, though, McNamee said, "What do you want me to do? I'll go to jail, I'll do whatever you want."

It sounds like McNamee is saying he's sorry about the whole thing, but that he had no choice but to tell the truth, which was that he'd shot Clemens up. It also sounds like he might have at least entertained the idea of recanting his story, which would have put him at risk of arrest. But Clemens didn't bite, and now that the offer, if that's what it was, has been made public, it's no good anymore.

Next page: Were they lawyered up or just bad communicators? Plus: Ohio State loses another title game -- to LSU