Clemens Warms Up Bench Before Hearing

As baseball great Roger Clemens prepares for a high-profile hearing next week on the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, the seven-time Cy Young award winner has launched a “charm offensive” on the members of the committee who will publicly interrogate him on the issue.

According to a source close to Clemens, the former pitcher will have met with a majority of the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — including its chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), and its ranking member, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) — by the time he appears before the panel next Wednesday.

Corporations, trade associations and executive branch nominees have traditionally made the rounds of lawmakers before facing potentially hostile House or Senate panels, but they are part of the Washington establishment, where such gamesmanship is expected. For someone from outside the political world, such as Clemens, to engage in such a personal lobbying effort “is highly unusual, almost unprecedented, to say the least,” said a top House Democratic leadership aide.

Lawmakers who have participated in the sessions say Clemens is pushing three basic themes: 1) he’s innocent and has never used steroids or human growth hormone; 2) he is a victim of a smear campaign by Brian McNamee, a former trainer who claims to have injected Clemens with the now-banned drugs; and 3) he deserves an impartial hearing when he appears before the committee — and not to be portrayed as the living embodiment of all steroid abuse in pro sports.

The round robin of meetings, some of which have lasted as long as an hour, is being driven personally by Clemens and his attorneys, Rusty Hardin and Lanny Breuer. Joel Johnson, a lobbyist for the Glover Park Group, a Democratic lobbying firm, is helping to arrange the sessions.

In addition to Waxman and Davis, Clemens was to have huddled by the end of the day Friday with Reps. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.), Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Bill Sali (R-Idaho), Christopher Shays (R-Ga.), John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), Lynn A. Westmoreland (R-Ga.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). Additional meetings are planned for Tuesday with Reps. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), John L. Mica (R-Fla.), Diane E. Watson (D-Calif.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Clemens’ effort to reach out to lawmakers before testifying is extraordinary in several respects, and it reflects both the legal and public relations challenges he faces as he tries to counter McNamee’s devastating charges, which were first detailed in a report on steroid use in baseball by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine).

In connecting with members of the committee, Clemens appears to be exploiting his high profile in order to soften the hostility he might otherwise expect to experience Wednesday. Norton’s staff members said their boss had an “amicable” exchange with Clemens on Friday — and that she didn’t ask him about the steroid-HGH allegations.

The meetings underscore one significant edge Clemens may enjoy at Wednesday’s hearing: He’s a Major League Baseball legend, and McNamee is not. Clemens’ fame — and any warm feelings committee members have for him as a result — could shade members’ views as they weigh the diametrically opposed stories Clemens and McNamee have told about what occurred between them regarding alleged steroid-HGH use.

McNamee has said he personally injected Clemens with steroids and HGH in 1998, 2000 and 2001, when Clemens pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays an the New York Yankees. McNamee even recently offered some physical evidence — a used syringe with steroid traces and a bloody gauze pad that may contain Clemens’ DNA — to federal investigators as proof of Clemens’ drug use.

Clemens is adamant in his denial of McNamee’s allegation. “I did not provide Brian McNamee with any drugs to inject into my body,” Clemens said on his personal website back on Dec. 23. “Brian McNamee did not inject steroids or human growth hormones into my body either when I played in Toronto for the Blue Jays or the New York Yankees.”

Depending on what each man said to committee investigators in their interviews this week, as well as how the two testify in next week’s hearing, either Clemens or McNamee could find himself in jeopardy of facing perjury charges for lying to Congress, a felony offense punishable by prison time.

Clemens’ “charm offensive” may not help him on that legal front, but could it work in deflecting some of the criticism that might be thrown in his direction next week? It certainly seems to be having that effect.

After meeting with Clemens, Bilbray told The New York Times that he was “just sort of a gosh-darn kind of guy, ... the kind of guy you’d probably want to have as a next-door neighbor, I guess, if he didn’t hit a baseball through your window.” Burton, a former chairman of the committee, said he thinks Clemens is “just asking for a fair shake.”

“I think he deserves that,” Burton said, “and I hope he gets it.”