Baseball's Steroid Era

Even to a former New York City cop, the question was jarring. "Can you help me?" Roger Clemens asked. "I can't inject in my booty."

This is how Brian McNamee, then the Toronto Blue Jays' new strength and conditioning coordinator, remembers it all starting. He glanced up at Clemens, whose broad frame blocked most of McNamee's view of the rest of the SkyDome clubhouse. A few other players milled about the room, preparing for the upcoming series against the Baltimore Orioles. Toronto designated hitter and occasional outfielder Jose Canseco was picking through his stall nearby, his back to Clemens and McNamee.

The trainer, who had come to baseball from the NYPD, was slumped in his own stall. Why, he wondered, was arguably the greatest pitcher of his era asking for help in sticking a hypodermic needle in his ass?

Only days before the release of the Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball, Clemens sat on the patio of a casita in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, after receiving a phone call from his agents, Randy and Alan Hendricks, that would change his life. McNamee had told federal law enforcement agents investigating a steroids distribution network run by former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski that he had helped Clemens use steroids and human growth hormone over a period of several years beginning in 1998. McNamee had also been cooperating with former senator George Mitchell's investigation.

In the weeks to come Clemens would attack McNamee on 60 Minutes and in a defamation suit, and his attorneys would smear McNamee's character. They would secretly record McNamee in conversations he thought were private. But Clemens would never mention the moment of truth in Cabo; he would say that he didn't know about McNamee's accusations until days later, in Houston, and that he'd been blindsided by his trainer's betrayal.

Flanked by his lawyers, Rusty Hardin and Lanny Breuer, Clemens entered room 2157 of the Rayburn Building, took the oath and promptly declared, "I have not used steroids or growth hormone." He repeated this denial, in various formulations, six times in the first 30 minutes of the exceedingly awkward meeting.

These were probably the most important sentences Clemens had ever uttered. The sworn statements were direct and unequivocal, and they were recorded verbatim. From that moment forward, if it were ever proved that Clemens had used steroids or HGH, he could be prosecuted for lying to Congress. For much of the deposition he sat silently while his lawyers spoke to the investigators, clarifying the pitcher's answers and bashing the methodology of the Mitchell Report. Clemens had eagerly looked forward to testifying. It was his chance to demonstrate resolve and, it seemed, to blow off steam.