Roger Clemens Faces Accuser Brian McNamee Before Congressional Committee Investigating Use of Illegal Drugs in Baseball

Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, whose 354 wins are the most since Warren Spahn retired with 363 victories in 1965, had his day in the court of public opinion on Wednesday, February 13, 2008, when he appeared with his former trainer Brian McNamee before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Committee hearings, which were given the moniker, "The Mitchell Report: The Illegal Use of Steroids in Major League Baseball, Day 2," featured Clemens denying McNamee's allegations that he had provided Clemens with steroids and Human Growth Hormone (HGH).

According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Harry Waxman (D-CA), Clemens asked for the hearing in order to make his case against McNamee and to clear his name. However, Clemens' lawyers, Rusty Hardin and Washington political fixer Lanny Breuer, said that it was Waxman who had wanted the hearing. Hardin and Bauer intimated to the press that Henry Waxman ad staged the auto da fe of Roger Clemens for political gain.

This is the second time that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has investigated steroid abuse in baseball. The March 2005 hearings were resisted by baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, but went on and led to the humiliation of former and current superstar players, including Mark McGwire, whose stymieing of the Committee scuttled his Hall of Fame candidacy.

After the 2005 Committee hearings, Bud Selig tasked former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, a member of the board of directors of the Boston Red Sox, with investigating the use and abuse of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. The product of that investigation, contained in what is called "The Mitchell Report," revealed wide-spread abuse of such substances as steroids and HGH.

Of the current and former major league players named as abusers in the report, none was bigger than the pitcher Roger Clemens, who was a sure-fire bet to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer until his name was besmirched by the report. (Barry Bonds also was named in the report, but his drug woes had long been known.)