I didn't watch all of the congressional hearing yesterday involving Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee, but I saw the nearly half-hour of highlights on SportsCenter. The biggest thing that now strikes me is the fact that it might be possible that both men are telling the truth as they believe it. I don't necessarily believe that, but I have to admit it is a possibility. Clemens admits that McNamee injected him on multiple occasions. The disagreement is about what the substances in those injections were. McNamee says it was HGH and winstrol, Clemens says it was B12 and lidocaine.
So if I were one of the Congressmen at the hearings yesterday, I would have asked the following questions to each man to try and get closer to the heart of the truth:
-Did you ever inject/were you ever injected by the other party?
-What was the substance being injected?
-How many times and approximately when did said injections occur?
-Can you describe the circumstances around the reasons for the injections and any conversations that took place before the injections?
The last two questions obviously wouldn't be meant to get exact dates and word spoken, but my thinking is that you don't just walk up to someone and inject them. There has to be conversations and discussions about what is being injected, why it is being injected, and how it will be injected. I think if that last question could be sufficiently answered, we'd know a lot more about the truth of the situation.
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I'll agree that there is a remote possibility they both are telling their version of the truth. We've had a President define what "is" is, so it's possible that Clemens says he was not at the party because he showed up at Canseco's "after" the party was over. Clemens was injected with B-12 and lidocaine, unknowingly because McNamee took a wink to mean shoot me up with HGH and steroids.
In reality, one of them is lying to some degree. It's sad, but I tend to believe McNamee more. I don't know why, I just seem to trust him. I want to believe Clemens, because I like him, despite playing for most of the AL East against my then home team, the Baltimore Orioles.
They only sliver where I believe Clemens is that it is inconceivable that he would lie for so long, including oath-sworn testimony to Congress.