McNamee to File Lawsuit Against Clemens?

The aftermath of the Mitchell Report has been ripe with story lines, but when I came across this headline in the New York Times, I was blown off my seat:  “Brian McNamee to sue Roger Clemens.”  Read that a few times, let it resonate, and then let it set in…

If anything, I expected Clemens to seek counsel and file a lawsuit against McNamee or Major League Baseball, not vice-versa.  This was a bit shocking, to say the least.  In case you haven’t been keeping tabs, let’s take a minute to bring everyone up to speed.

Apparently, Richard D. Emery has been hired by McNamee’s lawyer, Earl Ward, to defend his client against allegations that he lied to the Mitchell investigators about Clemens’s use of performance enhancing drugs.  Emery is no stranger to the New York media, or unusual lawsuits.  Over the last year he rose to prominence after successfully reaching a settlement for more than 10,000 nonviolent inmates who were subjected to wrongful strip-searches by New York City’s Department of Corrections.  

 “If Roger Clemens continues to play fast and loose with the truth on ’60 Mintues’ and he continues to call Brian McNamee a liar then we will proceed with a defamation suit,” Emery told the NY Times.  “It is one of the only avenues Brian has to defend himself against the claims that he lied.”

“He is afraid that his character is going to be assassinated on national television and that Roger is going to continue to lie and trash him,” Ward adds.  “If that airs, Clemens should be prepared to see the matter litigated in the courts.”

What character is there left to destroy?  McNamee is going to be sitting in prison for selling, what ultimately has to be considered, drugs.  It wasn’t as if he was some type of upstanding citizen that had his integrity compromised while he was trying to protect Major League Baseball.  He’s the one that brought them into the clubhouses.  He already assassinated his character when he decided to traffic drugs to Major League Baseball players.  This might have given him some street credibility in prison, but he went and compromised that when he decided to co-operate with the authorities.  So what could Clemens and his legal team possibly do to this guy that he hasn’t done to himself?

I’m starting to think that he has some type of personal vendetta against the man.  What is his motivation?  It was never about helping Mitchell clean up baseball.  We all knew that.  It was about getting a reduced sentence in exchange for his insight into the steroid culture, or so we thought.  It just seems like he is on some mission to make sure that Clemens never recovers from this blow. 

That might be a bit of a reach, but it’s starting to appear that way.  It’s either one of two things, either he does, indeed, have some type of score to settle with Clemens, or he sees this as a prime opportunity to get paid.  It could be one or the other, or both. 

There is some good that could come out of this if it hits the courts.  We would finally know the truth about Clemens.  All the speculation could end, and we could then focus the witch hunt on another man.  Clemens couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to lie under oath after what happened with Bonds, could he?