One Brave Man

In 2015, nearly three years after Roger Clemens was exonerated by a federal jury of perjury, where the underlying issue was whether he had taken anabolic steroids, dramatic new evidence, in the form of testimony by the most famous sports doctor in the United States, was uncovered to further strengthen Clemens' contention that he had never taken steroids. That testimony would have been revealed at trial in the defamation suit Brian McNamee had filed against Clemens. But much to the disappointment of Clemens, however, and his attorney Chip Babcock, the case was settled after the aggressive urging to reach an agreement by U.S. Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollack in Brooklyn, New York. Interviewed twice in late August, 2017, Dr. James R. Andrews, the legendary sports surgeon in Birmingham, Alabama, reiterated what he had told Babcock two years earlier, "There is no way Roger could have done steroids for enhancement." Babcock, who handled the settlement negotiations for Clemens, said in a 2016 interview, "I stood up in district court and said, "I want it to be clear that Mr. Clemens does not want to settle. He wants to go to trial." Babcock said almost wistfully, "If we had gone to trial we would even have called Jeff Novitzky to testify about McNamee's truthfulness." How ironic Jeff Novitzky, the super sleuth who was the government's face in the hunt for steroids in baseball, and who had looked high-and-low for evidence against Clemens, was prepared to testify for the Clemens defense. Although the father of molecular endocrinology, Dr. Bert W. O'Malley, was not going to testify, he had concluded seven years earlier that Roger Clemens did not take anabolic steroids by analyzing all his medical records, including blood tests, from 1995 through 2008. Based on his many years of pioneering research into the cell structures of anabolic steroids and the symptoms they produce, O'Malley said that types of symptoms associated with anabolic steroids use included elevated blood pressure, acne, increased LDL Cholesterol and decreased HDL Cholesterol. In the key paragraph of O'Malley's findings, he wrote, "I have not found any of the above listed positive indications of steroid abuse during this period for Mr. Clemens. The record is remarkably uniform and devoid of suspicious indicators."