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If Clemens is innocent, he should tell Congress

Ken Davidoff

11:37 PM EST, December 18, 2007

There's only one way for Roger Clemens to clear his name, one exit strategy that will get him the "benefit of the doubt" for which he yearns.

Clemens needs to go in front of Congress next month and repeat, under oath, the exact words his agent Randy Hendricks released Tuesday under the seven-time Cy Young Award winner's name. Otherwise, he's toast.

Is this fair? Nope, but we're not here today to rail against the many hypocrisies to have surfaced from the Mitchell Report. Well, maybe we'll do that a little bit, further down in the column. Right now, this is about reality. About Clemens throwing a Hail Mary pass to salvage his rapidly deteriorating reputation in the court of public opinion.

There will be two congressional hearings next month on baseball and illegal performance-enhancing drugs. First comes the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Jan. 15 -- that's the group that memorably hosted Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and others on March 17, 2005 -- then the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection on Jan. 23.

For now, no players have been invited or subpoenaed, although a person close to the situation said, on the condition of anonymity, that it wouldn't surprise him if players -- such as Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada -- were eventually invited. Last time, "invited" quickly became "subpoenaed."

If this person proves correct, then Clemens' options would be simple:

A) If he's telling the truth with this denial of Brian McNamee's allegations, then he's good to go.

B) If he's lying, then he can repeat the denial and pray that no one digs up more evidence on him and nails him with a perjury charge.

C) If he's guilty, he can come clean -- and he should be protected from prosecution, because his last alleged transgression occurred in 2001. McGwire wanted to come clean in '05, but five years hadn't passed since he quit the juice.

D) The McGwire "I'm not here to talk about the past" strategy.

E) The Sammy Sosa "No speak English" gambit.

Option A would represent the best route, of course, yet that might not be a realistic choice for Clemens. Not with Pettitte already making McNamee look honest with his confirmation of human growth hormone use in 2002. And Brian Roberts' confession to the Baltimore Sun props up the entire Mitchell Report, because many regarded the Roberts charge as the weak link.

Keep challenging Mitchell's obvious conflicts of interest, and keep wondering why Bud Selig, the Red Sox and the Cubs got off so easy in this report. At this point, however, challenging the Kirk Radom.ski/McNamee testimony is clearly a losing battle.

So what is Clemens going to do? Forget the lawsuit idea. "The only thing going on is contained in the statement that Roger put out today," Joe Householder, spokesman for Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin, said Tuesday. Translation: Nope, no lawsuit.

No, Congress looks like the best option from here, even if it's one of options B, C, D or E.

Clemens pleads that people not "rush to judgment," and he couldn't make a more rational plea. Except too few people will listen to such reason. To the contrary, people already wonder what took Clemens so long to put out this statement.

I think we can all agree that Congress is, too often, a joke. These are the same geniuses who thought Selig's hiring of Mitchell was brilliant, while the rest of us saw through the chicanery.

But this is public life in 2007, and this is Clemens' current problem: He desperately wants to preserve his good name and his Hall of Fame candidacy, and with each day, each breaking news story, those assets plummet.

"It would be interesting to see whether or not he's making these denials under oath," Earl Ward, McNamee's attorney, said Tuesday of Clemens. Far less biased parties are saying the same exact thing.