Gammons and Clemens Are Buddies,McNamee Ordered Rocket Around

Pat Jordan of The Baseball Analysts website recounts his encounters with Roger Clemens. Most interesting was his description of a run-in which showed Clemens to have a slightly damaging relationship with ESPN legend turned Red Sox shill, Peter Gammons.

Later in the piece Jordan describes the relationship between Clemens and his trainer Brian McNamee, who seemingly ordered the Cy Young collector around like Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. Apparently buttered baked potatoes are sacrilegious yet injections that eat your insides are fair game.

I had a chance to become friends with Mr. Clemens in 2001, when I interviewed him for a profile in the New York Times Sunday magazine. But, alas, our friendship did not take. Despite the fact that I, like Mr. Wallace, felt I too had been objective in my profile, Mr. Clemens did not concur. In fact, he called me up after the story appeared and berated me over the telephone.

When I asked him what he didn’t like about the story, he said, “I didn’t read it.” I responded, “Then how do you know you don’t like it?” He said he was told by his “friend,” and the co-author of one of Mr. Clemens’ books, Peter Gammons, the ESPN-TV analyst, that he should hate it. In fact, Mr. Clemens hated my profile so fervently that he had me banned from the Yankees’ clubhouse during the years he remained with the team.

I would later learn that one of the many things Mr. Clemens hated about my profile of him was my description of his fawning relationship at the time with his friend Mr. McNamee, who lived in the pool house of Mr. Clemens’ Houston estate. On the first day I interviewed Mr. Clemens in Houston I had dinner with him and Mr. McNamee at the most exclusive steak house in Houston. The bill was for over $400, which I paid. Mr. Clemens said, “I’ll get you tomorrow.”

The next day he bought me a taco at a Mexican Restaurant. But the point of my profile of Mr. Clemens was less about his parsimoniousness than it was his strange relationship with Mr. McNamee. During the dinner at the steakhouse Mr. Clemens asked Mr. McNamee for his permission to have a steak (McNamee nodded) and a baked potato (McNamee nodded again, but added a caveat, “Only dry."). The same scenario played itself out at the Mexican Restaurant. Clemens pointed to an item on the menu and Mr. McNamee either nodded, or shook his head, no.

First of all, what a douche. Clemens puts a $400 dinner on the sportswriter's tab and thinks buying a $4 burrito the next day is reciprocating. Combine that type of compensation with the cumulative effects of his intravenous use and that wife of his must be one unsatisfied Texan.

If Jordan's report is true - and why would he make up such an anecdote - Gammons takes a major hit. Every sports reporter will garner relationships with their subjects and sometimes even develop friendships after years of close observation. This is no travesty.

However, once you begin policing other writers who may have criticized an ally athlete, there is reason to be worried of how slanted that individual's reporting has become.

Since Gammons recovered from a serious health ailment, his Red Sox tilt has become impossible to ignore. Jordan's piece reinforces the idea of a transforming sports culture which encourages reporters to befriend - not belittle - their subjects.