WASHINGTON – Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal got a little closer to home Thursday as seven-time Cy Young award-winning pitcher Roger Clemens met with Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings to discuss how professionals using steroids could affect inner city athletes.
“Baseball players, whether they want to be or not, are role models,” Cummings said. “It’s about trying to make sure that kids have the impression that they don’t have to cheat, and that they don’t have to violate baseball rules and violate the law to be successful.”
Clemens arranged the meeting with Cummings — a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that Clemens will testify before next week — in an attempt to talk personally with as many of the committee’s members as possible before the hearing.
“Because the perception out there was so strong originally that he did it and was lying, he’s going to extra steps to try and persuade and make people comfortable with the fact that he didn’t do it,” said Rusty Hardin, Clemens’ top lawyer.
However, Cummings said he wasn’t interested in talking to Clemens about whether he did steroids, as alleged in former Sen. George Mitchell’s recent report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball. That, Cummings said, should be dealt with next week before the full committee.
Instead, their conversation focused on how professional athletes’ use of steroids can affect impressionable younger athletes.
“The reason why we got involved in the hearing was because of children,” Cummings told reporters after the meeting. “I said to (Clemens) that I’m not so much worried about people like him, who are making millions of dollars, but I’m worried about children believing that the only way to be successful is to use steroids.”
Cummings said he told Clemens he’s particularly worried about young athletes living in inner-city Baltimore, his hometown.
“One of the ways that they see themselves emerging to a better life is through sports,” Cummings said. “If they believe that their sports heroes are using steroids, it’s logical that that’s something that they’ll gravitate towards.”
Cummings is one of the creators of Powered by Me!, a campaign through St. Joseph Medical Center that promotes steroid-free athletics.
Clemens was the biggest name to emerge from the Mitchell Report in December, the result of an investigation by the former senator on steroid use in baseball at the request of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. The report also implicated former Baltimore Oriole Miguel Tejada, Boston Red Sox pitcher Eric Gagne and Clemens’ former teammate Andy Pettitte, among others.
Clemens and Pettitte were named by their former trainer, Brian McNamee, who claimed he injected them both with steroids and human growth hormone. Pettitte has admitted McNamee’s charges are true, but Clemens denies them.
While Cummings and Clemens talked Thursday, McNamee was in the same House office building, testifying in preparation for next week’s hearing.
Information leaked earlier in the week that McNamee gave federal prosecutors syringes and gauze samples that he said he used when he injected Clemens with the steroids and human growth hormone.
Hardin denied the charges again Thursday, saying that his client was innocent. Jokingly, he said they might consider “filing a complaint with the health department” over McNamee’s unorthodox evidence, adding that no judge would accept it.
Walking into Cummings’ office, Clemens’ only comment was that he was “. . . ready for Wednesday.”
As for next week’s hearing, Cummings said he’ll just be looking for Clemens to be straightforward.
“The thing that the committee wants most of all is the truth,” Cummings said. “We want honesty.”