It’s Time to Get Over Our Obsession with Steroids

I just happened to be sitting with Roger Clemens’ lawyer Rusty Hardin in the bar of the St. Regis hotel Friday when his office back in Houston called with the latest news: Clemens’ former trainer had just filed a defamation suit against the his client.

Hardin shook his head, a crooked smile crossing his face. “So let me get this straight,” he says before taking the usual series of calls from the media following this story. “McNamee is accusing Clemens of defaming him by saying that McNamee did not break the law and inject him with steroids. Well, that’s got to be the first time someone filed a defamation suit against someone for defending his character.”

And off he went to the lobby to take calls from the New York Times, AP and others eager for his reaction to the latest odd twist is our continued obsession with baseball players and steroids.

This latest walk through the looking glass reminds me of the similarities—and important differences—between Clemen’s experience and that of Fed Chairman Ben Bernake, who appeared on 60 Minutes right before giving testimony to Congress on the AIG bonus scandal a few months back.

Both went on 60 Minutes to address a public controversy. Clemens sat down with Mike Wallace a year ago January to answer questions about steroids and said he didn’t use them. Bernanke sat down with Scott Pelley to answer questions about millions in AIG bonuses and said he knew nothing about them.

Both men were called liars in Congressional testimony that followed. McNamee insisted he’d injected Clemens with steroids. Edward Libby, AIG’s interim chief executive, revealed that one of Bernanke’s men had a seat at the table when the bonuses were awarded.

The similarities end there. Congress hauled in Clemens to explain the discrepancies. When he repeated what he’d told 60 Minutes, the committee called for a perjury investigation.

We are still waiting for Congress to question Chairman Bernanke about the bonuses.

The lesson: even with the country on the verge of financial ruin, the politics of distraction continues. In this bizarro world, the truthfulness of a baseball player trying to rescue his reputation is more important than the truthfulness of a fed chairman trying to rescue our economy.

Really, how long do we play the fools? And please understand, this isn’t about whether Roger Clemens took steroids and lied about it or not. Hasn’t most of America already made up its mind? That’s certainly true of his former employers, who won’t let him near a baseball field. And the Houston hospital that removed his name from the wing he gave $3 million to help build. And the legions of baseball writers and former players who say Clemens should never enter the Hall of Fame.

No, this isn’t about Roger. It’s about upholding the law. And spending taxpayer money wisely. And finally getting our priorities right.

Which brings us to Team Clemen’s request last winter that a Texas judge change his mind about dismissing the pitcher’s defamation suit against McNamee. Boiled down to its essence, Clemens’ lawyers argued that the government was wrong when it used the Mitchell Report to do what it would not — or could not — do in a court of law: put Clemens on trial.

To review: the Balco prosecutors had strong evidence that McNamee committed a crime and was dealing steroids. They traded McNamee immunity for cooperation, after which he gave up Clemens. They then told McNamee that the only way he could avoid jail was to repeat his allegations to Mitchell—knowing full well McNamee’s accusations would soon be made public.

In other words, the government used the Mitchell Report to convict Clemens in the court of public opinion. (Why baseball’s owners were so willing to play this role is for a later story.) The prosecutors didn’t have to prove their case, just force McNamee to talk. Clemens had no legal recourse, which was confirmed when Federal Judge Keith P. Ellison dismissed the defamation suit.

Think about Clemens what you will, but denying him the presumption of innocence is wrong. So is making prosecutors both judge and jury, and using the media to convict the accused. It didn’t work out so well in the Duke lacrosse case. And it’s not working out so well here, either.

“Requiring witnesses to divulge to Mitchell names of people the Justice Department never intended to prosecute surely violated the purposes of both grand jury secrecy law and Department of Justice policy,” former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor Frank Bowman wrote in Slate Magazine a year ago. “Cleaning up baseball is a laudable objective. But so far the government failed to explain why normal rules governing criminal investigations should be ignore to achieve it.”

The same can be said for the House Oversight Committee, which knew exactly what Clemens would say when it called in the pitcher last February. Considering some of scandals this committee ignored the last several years — the Valerie Plame leak, the Jack Abramoff payoffs, charges of CIA abuses in Abu Ghraib among others — you’d think they’d have passed on the Clemens case, too. Instead, they gave the baseball star a choice: declare himself a liar or be investigated for perjury.

Again, this isn’t about Clemens, it’s about us. The New York Times reported Friday that nine banks who took huge sums of taxpayer money turned around and handed more than 5,000 traders bonuses in excess of $1 million each. A recent Newsweek poll showed almost seven in 10 Americans think they will lose their job in the coming year. Maybe if we paid more attention to bankers than baseball players, more than half of us would not be living in fear of the future.

Clemens’ lawyers were hoping their client could face his accuser in a civil trial instead of a criminal proceeding. At least that would have cost taxpayers a lot less money. But Clemens’ legal team doesn’t expect Judge Ellison to change his mind, and a perjury indictment will probably be handed up before an appeal of Ellison’s decision is heard. If that happens, we’ll continue to spend valuable manpower and taxpayer money chasing a baseball player who’s already been “caught.”

So the Clemens perjury investigation grinds on. As does the Barry Bonds perjury case. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in California takes its time deciding if the government can go after all of the 104 players who failed the same test Alex Rodriguez failed in 2003.

After seven years and more than $55 million spent on what now can only be considered a witch hunt, isn’t it time we told baseball owners to police their game and our government to end this distraction?