The problems keep piling up for Roger Clemens, who currently is under investigation by the FBI for having committed perjury before a House Subcommittee investigating the use of illegal performance enhancing substances by professional baseball players. Troubled country singer Mindy McCready tearfully admitted to having had a relationship with baseball legend Roger Clemens, who first met her when she was 15 years old and he was the 28-year-old married father of two. The New York Daily News, which is spearheading an investigation into the use of illegal drugs by pro athletes, reported that Clemens met the 15-year-old McCready while she was sining karaoke at a bar. The meeting and subsequent relationship was confirmed McCready’s mother, Gaye Inge, tough she said, “They were friends.”
When contacted by the Boston Herald, Inge said that she had queried her young daughter about the nature of her relationship with the pitcher.
“Obviously it’s a question I had to ask. A mother wants to know what’s going on,” Inge said. “As a mother, I was told nothing.”
Inge eventually came to believe that the relationship was platonic, after her daughter brought Clemens to the family home in Fort Myers, Florida for breakfast “a couple of years ago.
Roger Clemens first set his eyes on Mindy McCready when the 15-year-old was singing karaoke at a bar called the Hired Hand in Fort Meyers, where the Boston Red Sox — the team Clemens broke in with and won the first of his record seven Cy Young Awards for — had their spring training compound. Clemens took the underage McCready to his hotel room that very night, although sources close to Clemens say the sexual part of their relationship wasn’t consummated until much later, when the singer came of age. However, there is the possibility that the pitcher might have engaged in underage sex with the then teenage girl, though sources close to the pitcher deny it.
During their decade-long affair, Clemens supplied McCready with cash, as much as $25,000 at a time, which was delivered to her via Federal Express envelopes. The revelation of the affair, and McCready’s confession that she was, indeed, involved with Clemens, likely will have an adverse impact on his defamation lawsuit against his former personal trainer Brian McNamee, the man who blew the whistle on Clemens’ alleged use of illegal performance enhancing drugs, as detailed in baseball’s Michell Report. Roger Clemens is suing McNamee over the trainer’s charges that he supplied the All-Star pitcher, who had been considered a sure bet as a first ballot Hall of Famer before the eruption of the baseball drug scandal, with steroids and human growth extract.
Not many people are likely to believe that story. Rusty Hardin, the lawyer employed by Roger Clemens to see him through the revelations of his use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, admitted that his client had a long-term relationship with McCready but insisted that it was not sexual.
“He flatly denies having had any kind of an inappropriate relationship with her,” Hardin told the press. He’s considered her a close family friend.”
Roger Clemens’ wife Debbie, who also was implicated in the drug scandal, allegedly knew about his “relationship” with the teenage singer. In addition to receiving cash from Clemens, McCready and her brothers used the pitcher’s personal aircraft, which Debbie Clemens also knew about.
The Daily News reports that sources close to Clemens claim that their relationship didn’t turn sexual until Mindy McCready, now of age, established herself in Nashville as a country singer. McCready told the Daily News, which broke the news of the affair on Sunday, “I cannot refute anything in the story.”
Brian McNamee’s lawyer Earl Ward said, “This is going to have an impact on Roger Clemens’ reputation and credibility. This has opened a door. Roger Clemens has opened up a Pandora’s Box.”The question of why a married man in his late 20s and early 30s would have relationship, sexual or otherwise, with a teenage girl was left unanswered. What is evident is that Clemens’ defamation lawsuit against McNamee may be scuttled due to the revelation of the affair. Clemens in suing McNamee on the grounds that his claims that he supplied the pitcher with illegal performance-enhancing substances sullied Clemens’ reputation. If Clemens has no reputation, he has no case.
Thus, Roger Clemens’ reputation is the keystone of the defamation lawsuit he has filed against McNamee, making the revelations of his relationship with Mindy McCready of paramount importance. McNamee contends that Clemens used performance-enhancing substances during his major league career, after he left the Boston Red Sox for the Toronto Blue Jays, and then with the New York Yankees. Clemens and his lawyers, as well as his Republican defenders at the recent Congressional hearings into the Mitchell Report at which Clemens testified, have attacked the veracity of McNamee, partly on the basis that he himself was involved in a sexual faux pas.
Richard Emery, who is representing Brian McNamee in the defense of Clemens’ defamation suit, said of the affair, “If true, it’s just another example of Roger’s pervasive prevarications which will be at the core of any defamation case.”
Roman Polanski brought a libel lawsuit against the American magazine Vanity Fair in England, because the English court system is much more liberal on issues of libel and defamation than are courts in the United States. An article published by Vanity Fair claimed that Polanski had had sex on the very night of learning of the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child by the Manson Family. The forum-shopping Polanski won the case, and the publishers of Vanity Fair were bitter as he likely could not have won in an American court. (Indeed, Polanski could not have defended himself in an American court, as he would have been subject to arrest as a child rapist.) The magazine’s barristers unsuccessfully argued that Polanski could not be defamed because of his sullied reputation. Since Polanski was an escaped fugitive from justice, having committed statutory rape on a 13-year old girl, Polanski had no reputation to be defamed and thus the article could not have damaged him.
While a British court wouldn’t buy that argument, an American court would. If it is proven that Roger Clemens had had an extramarital affair, let alone had had sex with an underage girl, a jury could find that he had no reputation to defame, and thus Brian McNamee would win the suit.
Mindy McCready, who is now 32-years-old, has had her own well publicized personal problems. The singer who had a #1 hit song in 1996 with “Guys Do It All the Time” (a possible reference to Roger Clemens?) hasn’t charted a song in the top 50 since 2002. In 2004, she was busted for drug possession and put on parole, but she was subsequently jailed from September through December 2007 for violating parole. Her parole violation stemmed from her having a fight with her mother at the family home in Ft. Myers, Florida, and then resisting arrest.
McCready has been very public about her personal problems, which includes being beaten by the father of her child, who was born out-of-wedlock. Her mother claims that Mindy suffers from “low self-esteem.” Whether that low self-esteem stems from being sexually abused by Roger Clemens as a child, or shame over her affair with the pitcher, time likely will tell. McNamee’s lawyers intend to subpoena Mindy McCready as a witness in the defamation trial.
If it is proven that Roger Clemens committed statutory rape, his reputation will be as worthless as that of Roman Polanski. A revelation of an extramarital affair beginning after McCready reached the age of consent also would tarnish Clemens’ reputation to the point where he would be unable to prove that McNamee had damaged him, as his reputation would be sullied to a point to be practically worthless. Clemens has, publicly and in his legal hassles, portrayed himself as a family man, and thus is vulnerable on this point.
What might be more intriguing is the background to Clemens cash payments to McCready, who has documented drug problems. Questions might arise as to why Roger was sending her money. Was it simply friendship, or something else? To pay for an abortion? To pay for drugs? Or simply to pay hush-money to a woman who had the ability to crush his reputation?
Mindy McCready, trying to pull her life out of the deep rut it has fallen into, is undertaking the filming of a documentary of her life. A “tell-all” book featuring further revelations of her “relationship” with Clemens may very well follow. McCready allegedly fell out with about the time he was pitching with the New York Yankees in the early part of the decade, and a “Kiss & Tell Book” might just help her refill her financial coffers and jump-start her moribund career.
Sources:
Associated Press, “Report: Clemens had relationship with Mindy McCready”
The Boston Herald, “Mom quizzed country singer about relationship with Roger Clemens”
The New York Daily News, “Mindy McCready weeps as she confirms affair with Roger Clemens”
USA Today, “Clemens-McCready report could impact McNamee case”
Reference:
- Roger Clemens Will Receive Presidential Pardon Due to His Republican Connections www.associatedcontent.com/article/603347/roger_clemens_will_receive_presidential.html
