Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee are back in the headlines today with the news that Clemens' DNA was found in syringes provided to federal authorities by McNamee. Clemens is saying McNamee manufactured the evidence, McNamee is saying Clemens is a liar and we're inching ever closer to a perjury trial for the ages.
McNamee also popped up in the discussion of Joe Torre's "The Yankee Years." David Cone called him a "hustler" within its pages and someone, it's hard to tell just who thanks to all of the third person stuff, said that McNamee was seen as a steroid connection within the Yankee clubhouse. Torre, hiding behind his co-author and veil of unbelievable ignorance, says he never saw anything about steroids himself, but McNamee is there in the book and not all that happy about it.
That's why he'll be joining Howard Stern for an interview next Monday. According to the Daily News, McNamee won't be able to discuss the Clemens case directly, but wants to answer back to the allegations that came from the book. His choice of Stern as interviewer is just as telling as Torre's choice of Larry King.
King's interview was a joke. He hadn't read the book, relied on easily ignored and dodged internet and phone questions to ask anything remotely harsh to Torre and at one point invited children on the set to genuflect. The most pathetic moment was when Torre played off the Alex Rodriguez as A-Fraud claims as a joke, when his book makes it clear that it was said behind A-Rod's back as an insult. King didn't follow up, because you'd need to actually prepare for that.
It was an abomination, in other words, and the latest reason why it is impossible to take CNN all that seriously as a news organization when King remains on the payroll.
Stern is no bastion of journalistic integrity but he's not King, either. McNamee will be given room to roam and fire broadsides, but he'll also be asked questions that will catch him off guard. Stern is very good at coming from angles that his guests would never predict, while Torre, or another co-author, probably wrote the questions for his chat.
In short, we may actually learn something from the McNamee interview, which would be a nice step forward.
