Article:Rocket Man

If you're looking for a professional review of what happened with Roger Clemens on Wednesday, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a smart lawyer who knows what legally happened at Clemens' hearing on Wednesday, keep searching. If you're looking for a not-so-intelligent opinion from a not-so-smart Boston sports fan who's in his 6th year of undergraduate at Bridgewater State College, then you've come to the right place.

I'm not going to pretend to know anything about the legal ramifications Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee could face, I'm just going to give my opinion of what I watched on Wednesday. And what I watched was an embarrassment. It's been two days since it was on, and I'm too lazy to look up stuff that happened, so don't mind me if I "misremembered" some of the details that took place.

I turned on the hearing about halfway through. From what I gathered, each congressman that was there had five minutes to grill either McNamee or Clemens. I saw things come from both angles. I saw one congressman think it was his own stand up comedy act, as he started making jokes and everyone was laughing.

I thought this was supposed to be some sort of serious hearing?

I also saw a woman, representing the state of New York, start her statement off by thanking Clemens for all the wonderful things he did on the field for the Yankee organization and off the field in the community.

What a joke.

Then, one congressman, at the end of his statement, proceeded to ask Roger what hat he was going to wear into the Hall of Fame.

It became laughable.

The one thing I do know, however, is that you can't tamper a witness (at least I think that's the phrase). I know this nanny was thrown under the proverbial bus by McNamee's vivid account. So vivid, in fact, at one point I thought he was reading from an old script he dug up from his days as an aspiring screenwriter in the porn industry.

But the bottom line is this nanny was supposed to be a key witness in this whole hearing. Knowing all this, Roger and his legal team went on to call her and invite her to his house. When this was brought up at the hearing, Roger claims he was "trying to help you guys out". Right. He was trying to get in touch with her for a cup of tea and not talk about the upcoming hearing so they could get their story straight.

The best part is, after he said he was trying to help congress out, the guy leading congress says "I understand you were trying to help us out, thank you". Thank you?!?! Come on now. If he was in a real courtroom, the judge would have looked at him and said "Mr. Clemens, if you ever obviously lie to me and try to embarrass me in my courtroom again, I will have you hung, is that understood?"

Meanwhile, you have Mr. McNamee. He sits there, gets badgered by Congress and Clemens, and sits there and takes it like a man. Doesn't ever get his back up, like Clemens and his legal team did. He just sits there calm, answers every question, and continues to cooperate. Doesn't break any rules outside of the hearing, and provides evidence as much as he can. Has he lied in the past? Of course, he admitted that. Would he make this up though? I don't think so.

Like I said, I'm not the brightest bulb to be writing about some sort of legal hearing. I'm the kid who failed a class titled Sexuality last semester, and I love sex! But I can give the average man's opinion on this whole matter. Roger Clemens has always been about himself, his whole career. He wanted the limelight, and he wanted it to be about himself. He was always bigger than the team. Now, his good friend, Andy Pettitte is against him, along with Chuck Knoblauch.

Once again, it's Roger all by himself. It's all about him now. This time, I couldn't be happier.

-BJal

''BJal is a contributing writer to The Sports Brief. Please visit sportsbrief.blogspot.com for more of The Sports Brief, and send any comments, thoughts or questions to [mailto:sportsbrief@gmail.com sportsbrief@gmail.com].''