...Pants on Fire

Watching Roger Clemens get the George Foreman Grill treatment on "60 Minutes" Sunday night was sort of like watching an old episode of "Leave It to Beaver." The one where Beaver accidentally releases the emergency brake on the family car and it rolls down the driveway out into the street.

"How did the car get there, Beaver."

"Gee, Dad, I don't know. I didn't do it."

"The car didn't roll down the driveway by itself."

"Gee, Dad, maybe it did. Cars are kind of cool."

The plot from the show is real, but I don't think that's the exact dialogue. Because even Beaver, in his limited life experience as an 11 year-old, would have come forward with the truth a lot quicker than this pile of Texas dung.

If you look at body language, Clemens looked to be a goner from the first question raised by the increasingly crypt-keeper-like Mike Wallace. Fat Roger really was the teenager who got busted denting Dad's Lexus. Several basic rules gleaned from watching "Perry Mason" reruns. The louder the denial, the more guilty you are. The more insulted you are, the more guilty you are. The more you try to change the subject, the more guilty you are. Sunday night, as far as I am concerned, Roger got grounded with no allowance.

If he truly is that innocent and that insulted, Clemens should have been out with this interview on December 14, the day after the Mitchell Report named him for taking performance-enhancing steroids. Even coming from the Midwest, it wouldn't have taken him that long to read the highlights of the investigation. Maybe he could have had his knucklehead wife or one of his peckerwood kids read it to him. A similar vehement denial and tirade the day after certainly wouldn't have cleared him. But, if he is indeed innocent, he would have been speaking out immediately. Of course, the Clemens brand of excellence needs to be protected, so legal counsel was mandatory. Four weeks later, we now find out just how pissed he is.

Roger talks about how, after 25 years of being a solid citizen, he should merit more support. Yeah, this is the choirboy who has gone after more heads than Cochise. He's the guy who so embodies the team element of baseball that he now specifically requests to be present only on days he pitches. And, forget about bonding with the guy on road trips. He won't travel with the team. While the pitching talent can't be disputed, you also can't deny the fact that Clemens is a class A jerk. I really wish I was watching last night's interview on Mike Piazza's flat screen.

The indignation Roger shows toward former trainer Brian McNamee is ridiculous. Let me tell all my friends right now. If I ever get called by a federal investigator to answer questions about any of you, I will do so. And I will tell the truth. So, what kind of position was this McNamee guy in but to do just that? And I believe everything he said because it's all extensive and date-specific. If Roger wanted to refute the statements, he should have been equally as extensive and date-specific. "Brian couldn't have injected me on the afternoon of June 13, because I was sitting in the doctor's office with my wife, awaiting the results of her latest pap smear. Oh, and here are the medical records to prove it." Instead, Clemens shakes his head, moves his mouth, and says nothing. I would not be surprised to discover that his attorney is Edgar Bergen. He presents the former trainer as somebody who might have an axe to grind. How come Roger was working out with the guy just three days before the Mitchell Report came out?

Roger says that, if he was on these drugs, he "should have a third ear coming out of my forehead and I should be pulling tractors with my teeth." Is that to imply that he has not experienced any noteworthy physical change? You look at his photos over the past ten years. His head-to-torso proportion is approaching that of Squarepants Bob. And Roger throws Lot's wife on the open wound by also expressing shock that Yankee Andy Pettitte took injections. It's impossible that this is new information to him. After all, Pettitte, who is the Major League Baseball equivalent of an organ grinder's monkey, checks with Roger on when he should take his next bowel movement.

Indeed, even in his most orchestrated responses to Mike Wallace's questions, Roger might have shot himself in the foot, no pun intended. When he told his story about being injured and arguing with then Yankee Manager Joe Torre to let him pitch a World Series game, he said he ended up taking a painkiller to allow him to do so. So, here's the ideal snapshot for my wallet. A guy who will do almost anything to be out there. Not so much for the team. For Roger Clemens. And the exemplary role model that his marketers have created.

Maybe Roger is telling the truth. After all, we took him for his word the first time he retired. And the second time he retired. And the third time he retired. And he wasn't aiming the bat at Piazza. And he wasn't throwing at somebody's head. To me, when Roger Clemens says nothing happened, I want to look up in an almanac the exact date and time that something did happen. He reminded me very much of this classic clip of the wonderful Martin Short as sleazy lawyer Nathan Thurm.

Yesterday, the verbal toilet backed up some more. Clemens held a press conference which was co-hosted by some scumbag Texas lawyer named Rusty Hardin, who is guilty of wearing a bathmat for a hairpiece. Hardin's role was to back up Roger's denials and also play Ed McMahon during the pitcher's comment. Hi-oh! They played tape of a recent phone conversation between Clemens and McNamee, who had asked Roger to call because his son is on death's door. So, the Hall-of-Shame hurler seizes the opportunity to tape the whole call without McNamee's knowledge, probably hoping that the trainer might say something that would incriminate him. It never happened and all we heard was an ultra-boring very scripted dialogue that never once included the words "performance enhancing steroids." Clemen's comments were so rehearsed that, not only is Roger guilty of injecting this stuff, he also might have violated the Writer's Guild strike rules as well.

In this colony of rodents, I smell another rat. Clemens says that he is filing a defamation lawsuit against McNamee, the Mitchell Report, and probably anybody else he can find in the AOL Member directory. Well, when you have a lawsuit pending, wouldn't that preclude him from testifying in Congress? Isn't that exactly what the San Francisco Giant science project did to buy some time? But, heck, what do I know? I haven't liked the guy since he was smirking in the Red Sox dugout the night of Game 6 in the 1986 World Series.

That didn't turn out so well either, did it, Roger?

Does anybody know when they will be scheduling the victory parade for the World Champion 2000 New York Mets?

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Dinner last night: lasagna.