Know HGH

CBS/AP) WASHINGTON – Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens sat some 20 feet apart, Pettitte on the witness stand and Clemens at the defense table trying to avoid going to jail. The topic: a conversation Pettitte recalled having with his longtime teammate, mentor and workout partner about a dozen years ago.

“Roger had mentioned to me that he had taken HGH,” Pettitte testified, referring to human growth hormone. “And that it could help with recovery, and that’s really all I remember about the conversation.”

It’s a conversation that Clemens has famously claimed that Pettitte “misremembers.”
The right-hander on trial who won 354 major league games and the lefty on the stand with 240 wins had an awkward reunion Tuesday, Day 8 in the retrial of charges that Clemens lied when he told Congress in 2008 that he had never used steroids or human growth hormone.

Pettitte’s appearance enlivened the proceedings and came without warning. The government interrupted the testimony of the trial’s first witness to call Pettitte as the clock was about to hit noon. Wearing a gray suit, he walked into court a day after allowing six runs and 10 hits with eight strikeouts over 5 2-3 innings in an extended spring training game in Clearwater, Fla., as part his comeback attempt at age 39 with the New York Yankees.

Newsday reporter Jim Baumbach, who was keeping a running account of the testimony on his Twitter account, notes that Pettitte consistently avoided eye contact with Clemens
Pettitte testified mostly with his hands clasped in front of him and rarely looked at Clemens, even during the lengthy delays when lawyers held conferences at the judge’s bench. Clemens frequently took notes. The two haven’t spoken recently because of the trial, but Pettitte nevertheless said he found it difficult to testify because he still considers Clemens a good friend.

Pettitte is crucial to a government case that will otherwise rely heavily on the testimony of Brian McNamee, who worked as a strength coach for both Clemens and Pettitte and has said he injected both men with performance-enhancing substances. The government showed the jury photos of the three working out together in Texas during happier times — “Mac, Roger and me,” as Pettitte put it.

Pettitte has acknowledged he received HGH from McNamee; Clemens has not. Pettitte told the jury about the time he used HGH in 2002 while recovering from an injury, but he wasn’t allowed to say he was injected by McNamee because the judge ruled that information inadmissible.

Pitcher Andy Pettitte (21) glances towards pitcher Roger Clemens (22) of the Houston Astros on opening day against the San Francisco Giants at Minute Maid Park on April 5, 2004 in Houston, Texas.
(Credit: Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

Pettitte said he used HGH one other time, in 2004. He said regretted it both times he tried it, that he doesn’t think it helped him physically and that it has tarnished his name.

“I wish I never would’ve” taken HGH, he said. “If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Pettitte didn’t offer many details about the conversation in which he said Clemens supposedly admitted to using HGH, other than he remembers it taking place during a workout at Clemens’ house in Texas during the 1999-2000 offseason.

Pettitte also recalled the other time he spoke with Clemens about HGH, during the media swirl surrounding earlier congressional hearings — in 2005 — on drug use in sports. Both were playing for the Houston Astros, and Pettitte asked Clemens at spring training what Clemens would say if asked by reporters about HGH use.

Clemens responded: “What are you talking about?” according to Pettitte, and that Pettitte must have misunderstood the 1999-2000 conversation.

“He said, `My wife used it,”‘ Pettitte said.

“Obviously I was a little flustered,” Pettitte said, “because I thought that he told me that he did.”

Both Clemens and McNamee have said that McNamee injected Debbie Clemens with HGH at the Clemens’ home in 2003, although they differ over certain details.

Clemens has said publicly multiple times, including before Congress at a February 2008 hearing, that Pettitte “misremembers” the 1999-2000 conversation.

Before he could begin testifying about Clemens, Pettitte had to answer very rudimentary questions meant to educate a jury that knows little about baseball, leading him to make statements such as: “The Boston Red Sox play in Boston.”

Pettitte mentioned Clemens — along with pitchers Nolan Ryan and Jim Abbott — as players he admired while growing up Texas. Ten years apart in age, Pettitte said he “hit it off immediately” when he and Clemens first became teammates with the Yankees in 1999.

They remained teammates for nine seasons, five with the Yankees, then three with the Astros, then one more back in New York before Clemens retired after the 2007 season.

The trial was moving at a laborious pace before Pettitte appeared. Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin, spent the morning trying to challenge the merits of the 2008 hearing, specifically honing in on whether the questions asked of Clemens had anything to do with Congress’ stated mission of passing laws.
But Hardin was walking a fine line. A substantial challenge to the validity of the hearings could open the door to allow the government to introduce more evidence about the widespread use of steroids and HGH in baseball — something Clemens doesn’t want the jury to hear for fear of guilty by association.

The trial’s first witness, Phil Barnett, was majority staff director for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when that panel held the 2008 hearing. He said the hearing helped determine the accuracy of the 2007 Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball, but he added that no legislation was passed as a result.

MICHAEL ROSENBERG: Why allowing athletes to use PEDs is a horrible idea.

Let them do what they want. If it’s legal and approved by the FDA, let professional athletes pop, inject, rub or otherwise ingest whatever they damned well please. So the next time someone in the media asks Floyd Landis what he’s doing in Girona, Spain, Landis can say, “I’m babysitting the blood that Lance Armstrong plans to transfuse himself with in the Tour de France, of course. Why do you ask?”

We would shrug and move on.

We do, anyway. Don’t we?

Truth: How much do you really care about what pro jocks put into their bodies?

Alex Rodriguez just hit his 600th career home run on Wednesday and he was celebrated. He has admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs but so have many others.

We want to be on the right side of the moral street. But it’s not a big priority. It interferes with the entertainment of winning. We cluck our tongues when it happens to a player on somebody else’s team. We want to believe our heroes are clean. At the end of the day, we don’t really care. Here’s your award, Brian Cushing. Congratulations.

Now coaching hitting for your St. Louis Cardinals: (Unnaturally) Big Mac!

What if every pro athlete used performance-enhancing drugs, or at least had legal access to them? What if the use of performance enhancers were as accepted as Gatorade? Would it still be wrong? When everybody is wrong, is anybody wrong?

How different would it be than what we have now? Other than the lying, of course.

OK, OK. I hear you.

What about the health issues?

What about ‘em? The dangers of steroid abuse have been known for years. So has the risk of inhaling tobacco smoke. Nobody smokes a cigarette and gets a 50-game suspension.

What about the children? They look up to these athletes.

Oh, the horror! Little Billy sees Manny Ramirez lash line drives to everywhere, and before you know it, he’s hanging down at the corner mini-mart, waiting for his supply of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG).

Come on, parents. Do your jobs. Athletes aren’t role models. Athletes need role models.

The level playing field. It’s what sports are all about. What about that?

You mean the level playing field occupied by the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals? That level playing field?

What’s worse: The abuse that’s been going on for years? Or the hypocrisy that surrounds it?

When asked about my idea of letting athletes use some performance-enhancing drugs, Dr. Timothy Kremchek, the Cincinnati Reds’ director said: “I agree 100 percent.” Dr. Kremchek is an orthopedic surgeon and has operated on a number of ballplayers, from Brian Giles to Ken Griffey Jr. to Scott Rolen to Milton Bradley. “If it’s a legal drug, why can’t you take it? As long as the ramifications of taking it are totally understood, it’s their life.”

Yes, it is. Which prompts another question: If there were something you could take legally that would make you better at your job, might you consider it? If I could take a shot of John Updike or drown a couple hits of Hemingway in a long, tall glass of water, I’d give it serious thought.

Why is it any different for athletes, other than the fact we hold them to a higher standard?

We made some noise after Cushing won the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year award, twice. Maybe we didn’t make enough. Cushing broke the league’s substance abuse policy when he tested positive for HCG, a female fertility drug that’s commonly used to stimulate ovulation. It was the same stuff that got Manny Ramirez suspended for 50 games

Once you get past the undeniable Yuck Factor in a man ingesting something like that, you see that, according to the 50 NFL media types who vote on the award, it was OK. According to the voters, there was nothing wrong with what Cushing did. He won the award before his test results were released. He won the re-vote. One voter even changed his ballot the second time around. For Cushing.

Here’s how one scribe explained his decision to vote for Cushing, before and after:

“In good conscience, I couldn’t not vote for him after voting for Julius Peppers in 2002, knowing he’d tested positive (and won the same award), and for Kevin Williams on the All-Pro team knowing he’d tested positive”, the Houston Chronicle’s John McClain told the AP.

In good conscience?

“I also believe taking the award from Cushing would have opened up a Pandora’s box when it came to players and awards,” McClain said. In other words, lots of players use PEDs and we really don’t want to complicate the awards process with small details such as that.

I agree. And the only way to eliminate that minor glitch is to welcome every player into the legal world of performance-enhancing drugs.

We’ve lost the war. The irony is the more athletes who are caught, the more obvious that becomes. It’s almost like the fight against legalizing marijuana. We’ve been at that one for so long — and lost it so thoroughly — I don’t even remember what we were fighting about.

We’re numb to it. If you are under, say, 35, you’ve lived your entire family life with steroid stories. It’s no big deal. I’ll see your Barry Bonds and raise you a Roger Clemens. Who’s pitching for us tonight?

It’s time to be grown-ups about this. Time to stop holding pro athletes to a higher standard. Time to admit we’d do the same things they’re doing. Because we like winning, too.

Make it OK to juice, legally. Educate the juicers. Then let them decide. It is their lives.