Clemens dismisses steroid evidence as ‘bogus’

WASHINGTON — Baseball star Roger Clemens dismissed as bogus on Thursday new claims of evidence by his former trainer – including needles and bloody gauze pads – that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.

"This is a fabricated story," Clemens’ attorney Rusty Hardin said after the pitcher’s former trainer, Brian McNamee, testified behind closed doors for about seven hours to US congressional investigators.

Clemens let his attorneys do most of talking at a brief news conference, but said, "I’m looking forward to Wednesday of next week," when he and McNamee will be sworn in to testify before the US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

McNamee’s attorneys held a news conference of their own about an hour earlier.

They distributed to reporters photographs of needles, blood-stained gauze pads and a syringe McNamee says he kept after injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) in 2000 and 2001.

Clemens says McNamee injected him with the painkiller lidocaine and vitamin B-12, but not steroids or HGH.

Major League Baseball banned HGH in 2005 but there are no effective tests for it. Baseball banned steroids in 1991 but did not start testing for it until 2003.

Richard Emery, one of McNamee’s attorneys, insisted that the materials presented by his client were authentic and said McNamee kept them all these years to protect himself.

"He had a sense Roger was not trustworthy and would betray him ultimately, prescient though it may be," Emery said. "He certainly said about himself if he was going to get thrown under the bus by Roger, he was going to take Roger with him."

McNamee’s attorneys challenged Clemens to provide his DNA so tests could determine if it matches any of that on the materials produced by his former trainer.

"Roger Clemens has put himself in a position where his legacy as the greatest pitcher in baseball will depend less on his ERA (earned run average) and more on his DNA," Earl Ward, another of McNamee’s attorneys, said.

Hardin said if US prosecutors request Clemens’ DNA the 45-year-old baseball legend would comply.

But Hardin and Clemens’ other lawyers charged that their client was being smeared by a man with a record of lying.

Said Hardin: "I warn you all now, five or six or seven months from now any of you that jumped on this bandwagon... will be embarrassed."

A seven-time Cy Young Award winner as the best pitcher in his league, Clemens testified under oath earlier this week to staff members of the House Oversight Committee. McNamee appeared before staffers for the same panel.

The committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on Clemens’ challenge of a report on performance-enhancing drugs requested by Major League Baseball and conducted by former Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell.

McNamee and Clemens are to testify before the panel along with two of Clemens’ former teammates with the New York Yankees, retired second baseman Chuck Knoblauch and pitcher Andy Pettitte, who recently signed a new contract with the team.

The Mitchell report named more than 80 former and current players –including Clemens, Pettitte and Knoblauch – as suspected users of performance-enhancing drugs.

The stakes are high for Clemens, McNamee and other witnesses who will testify at the hearing next week. If any of them are convicted of lying to Congress, they face up to five years in prison.

Also hanging in the balance is whether Clemens will get inducted in the Hall of Fame. During a 24-year career he amassed a 354-184 record and was widely regarded as one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game.