Clemens' testimony ends up being a waste of time for all BY DOUG McKENZIE Correspondent It's been a week now since Roger Clemens sat before members of Congress to plead his innocence in the face of Brian McNamee's accusations that he injected the baseball great with steroids. And while the five-hour congressional hearing did little to bring an end to the matter, the buzz surrounding the event continues to linger. Perhaps because it is Roger Clemens, one of the greatest players in the history of America's pastime, that this nasty war of words has captured the attention of the nation. That is why certain members of Congress, led by Rep. Henry Waxman, decided it was important for them to step forward and take the lead on solving the question everyone's asking - who's telling the truth here? At the end of the day, we still don't know. But that leads to another question - should we really be surprised that the day's event proved unproductive? I mean seriously folks, you had to see this one coming, right? On one hand, you've got a guy of questionable character asking us all to forget about his past legal troubles and various indiscretions, and believe him based on what can only be described as shaky photographic evidence. And the guy he's trying to throw under the bus is a legend, who you have to believe would do anything to protect a legacy he's worked very hard to achieve. It boils down to a frustrating case of he said-he said, only now, it's become an expensive one, and guess who's paying the bill? The only evidence that we have learned of so far comes fromMcNamee,Clemens' former trainer and friend.McNamee has introduced some photographs of bloody gauze pads and old syringes that he claims were used to inject Clemens with steroids. And where has this evidence been kept all these years? InMcNamee's house, not a crime lab, where it would be properly stored and could potentially be considered admissible in a court of lawsomeday. So ifMcNamee and his lawyers thought they were introducing the smoking gun when they released those riveting photos of the evidence, I think they may be overplaying their hand a bit.Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe they have more on Clemens than they've shown so far. If not, they're going to have a tough time proving they have the truth on their side. They have not shown us anything concrete to prove that as of yet. And we knew that going into the hearing. As for Clemens, he tried taping a phone call withMcNamee, hoping that the apologeticMcNamee would say the wrong thing and admit that he lied to Sen. George Mitchell during the course of Mitchell's steroids investigation. Only he didn't. In fact, all along McNamee has been consistent with his story. During the course of the hearing, many of the distinguished congressmen did very little to distinguish themselves. Several of the Republican participants used the opportunity to attack McNamee and his credibility. With the likes of Tom Davis, Dan Burton, John Duncan, Christopher Shays and Darell Issa admonishing Mc- Namee for the things he has said, you could understand someone forgetting who entered the room as the accused. Even in a dog and pony showsuch as this event proved to be,members ofCongress, for the most part, never strayed from party lines, withmost of themseemingly entering the proceedings with their minds already made up. They asked questions we already knew the answers to, and each took their turn on the soapbox, repeating words like "integrity," "justice" and "truth." The truth of the matter is this - when the day began, the majority of people believed Brian McNamee was telling the truth and that Roger Clemens used steroids.After this five-hour waste of time and money, most people still believed Roger Clemens used steroids. There were no new facts or revealing evidence that came out during the course of the day, and neither man, McNamee nor Clemens, changed their tune in any way. They both opened the day by reading prepared statements that sounded like glorified book reports recapping everything they've been saying all along. We didn't learn anything during this overhyped congressional hearing, other than the fact that Clemens thinks "misremembering" is a word. It took five hours of repetitive testimony and nauseating grandstanding to leave the debate exactly where it started. Throwing two people telling two different sides to a story in front of a group of self-righteous politicians isn't going to make them change their tune. When a controversy gets the type of attention that this one has, the lawyers take over. And then everything the parties involved say becomes rehearsed. Itwill be interesting to seewhat happens next.Will the esteemed congressmen follow up on their riveting crossexamination in an attempt to unveil the truth? Will they go after Clemens the way they've gone after Barry Bonds? The difference, of course, is a large pile of actual evidence that federal prosecutors have as part of the case they're mounting against Bonds. My guess is this matter ends with both sides still pointing fingers at each other in tedious exchange of "liar, liar, pants on fire." And personally, I'm fine with that. If he did use steroids, which I believe he probably did, then he is certainly suffering a righteous judgment.When you achieve all that he has in his career, to be labeled a cheater and have all of that acclaim tarnished is punishment enough. When everyone knows the answers to the questions they're going to ask, maybe we could save a few million dollars if they just send a couple of e-mails instead. We don't need our politicians wasting our time and resources on mind-numbing exercises that have virtually no chance of revealing anything new. Hopefully, the next time they try to get together in front of a national audience and solve a problem by yelling at people, they won't misremember that.