Rocket grounded on Capitol Hill

Preach on, Elijah Cummings. Keep nailing Roger Clemens to the cross of lies that he will bear for the rest of his waking days.
Chuck Knoblauch is lying. Andy Pettitte is lying. Brian McNamee is lying. That's what Clemens wants you to believe, and he wants you to take his word that he is the only one telling the truth in a probe that threatens to throw him in jail for perjury and witness tampering.
So went a wild Wednesday on Capitol Hill, a day in which baseball took another body blow thanks to more allegations of cheating by a great player that will likely never go away. Clemens, the greatest pitcher of this or maybe any era, he of the seven Cy Young Awards, thousands of strikeouts and 300-plus wins, threw a four-inning stinker while testilying in front of the Committee on Government and Oversight Reform. The accusations against Clemens levied by McNamee in The Mitchell Report were corroborated by affidavits from Pettitte and Knoblauch, all but sealing Clemens' fate as a man who stayed at the top of his profession until an advanced age with the help of a little rocket boost in the buttocks.
Pettitte finally came clean and admitted that he used human growth hormone in 2004, making up for his lame statement months ago that he tried HGH just twice and stopped immediately. His wife also filed an affidavit confirming Pettitte's account, a detailed confession in which the New York Yankees' lefthander broke down and gave in to his guilt. Pettitte said that he talked to Clemens about HGH and believed that McNamee was administering the drug to Clemens. It's probably as close to hard evidence as we're ever going to get, but it might be good enough to convince a jury of his peers that Clemens was lying when he insisted that he had never taken steroids or HGH. Ironically, he was in about the same seat that Rafael Palmeiro was in three years ago when he pointed his finger at the committee and delivered his famous "I have never used steroids" line. How did that work out again?
Information concerning Clemens' former nanny was the most shocking element to come out of Wednesday's proceedings. The committee asked Clemens for the nanny's contact information leading up to the event in an attempt to interview her and Clemens, who hadn't spoken to the woman since 2001, instead invited her to his house in suburban Houston on Sunday for a chat. Was he just having her over for milk and cookies? To catch up on old times? Not likely. Clemens likely reached back and fired a high fastball at the nanny's head, some sort of warning about not testifying that Clemens was at a party in 1998 held by Jose Canseco. McNamee's revelations about Clemens start with that point in time, a party that Clemens insisted that he never attended. McNamee remembers the nanny, her peach bikini, and one of Clemens' sons playing by the pool. How many guys out there forget seeing women wearing peach bikinis? For that matter, how many women out there forget seeing women wearing peach bikinis? We tend to remember for different reasons, but I digress. Any attempt that Clemens might have made to influence the nanny's statements amounts to federal witness tampering.
Perhaps Rusty Hardin, Clemens' overmatched attorney, should have interceded and stopped the meeting. He didn't have much luck stopping Clemens from being raked over the coals during the hearing on Wednesday, despite his direct disregard for procedure on several occasions. This was not Tom Hagen whispering to Michael Corleone after a potentially loaded question. This was Hardin standing and confronting the committee on several occasions, a gross violation of protocol that was intended as a life raft to a drowning client.
Pettitte's initial statement seemed about as phony as the committee's attempt at bipartisan government, with the Democrats rallying behind McNamee's version of the events and the Republicans supporting Clemens. Most noteworthy among them was Dan Burton, a representative from Indiana who went on a scathing rant against McNamee's previous lies told both to the press and to federal agents. Burton said that he can't believe anything that McNamee told Mitchell. I say that he who lives in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Burton had an affair in the early 1980s with one of his secretaries and fathered a child out of wedlock that he barely acknowledges now. He lost his wife earlier this decade after a brave battle with breast cancer and has since remarried, walking down the aisle with -- drumroll please -- the oncologist who was treating his wife at the time of her death. Believe everything you read in the press, Mr. Burton? Believe this -- you're a disgrace, and if I was Clemens I would have told you to stop doing me any favors.
The sweetest thing about Wednesday's Congressional hearings is that Clemens asked for them. He had the arrogance and the ignorance to think that he could bully McNamee and a bunch of politicians like he did the hitters that stood in the batter's box against him for more than 20 years. Clemens forgot that this isn't the American League and there was no designated hitter to protect him. He dug into a script where Pettitte "misheard" and "misremembered" and got beaned on the first pitch that committee chairman Henry Waxman and his fellow questioners threw. Waxman also fired the final fastball while attempting to summarize the day's events, banging his gavel and shooting an icy glare as Clemens repeatedly interrupted. It was one final strikeout on a day of disappointment for Clemens, but this time he was the one swinging and missing.