No Longer "Allegedly": McCready Confirms Clemens Affair

Well, that didn't take long.

I expected that we would hear more about the affair that Roger Clemens was supposed to have had with country music singer Mindy McCready, and I might have suspected that we'd have more info within 24 hours...

But I sure as hell didn't expect the confirmation to come from McCready herself.

The NY Daily News is reporting this morning that McCready has confirmed her affair with Clemens.

"I cannot refute anything in the story."

McCready was described as "tearful but resolute" by the Daily News, which contacted her to get a confirmation or denial of the story they ran yesterday alleging the affair. That she "cannot refute" the details implies that they did meet in a bar in Fort Myers, Florida, during spring training in 1990, though there was no mention of why her parents would allow their 15 year old daughter to hang out in a bar frequented professional athletes twice her age.

Craig Calcaterra at Shysterball rightly says that Clemens is, "an evil and loathsome monster who contributed to the destruction of a young girl in a major way." But while we're at it, let's not let McCready's parents off the hook either. Until she's an adult, she's their responsibility, and it appears that they dropped the ball here.

More from the Daily News:

"After the teenage McCready met Clemens at a Fort Myers bar called The Hired Hand, she returned with the Rocket to his hotel room, but there was no sex that night, sources told The News.

It wasn't until later, after McCready had moved to Nashville and become a country singing star, that the relationship turned intimate."

Reading McCready's admission of the relationship this morning, to paraphrase Chevy Chase, could not have made me more surprised than if I'd woken up this morning with my head sewn to the carpet. But within the confines of that, this particular detail comes as no surprise at all, or at the very least, it does not surprise me that she would say that. This, just like Andy Pettitte's confession to using HGH back in 2003, before it was banned by MLB, comes off as the perfect confession: Yes, I did something wrong, but not that wrong.

It's all very convenient that McCready says that her sexual relationship with Clemens did not begin until she was 18 - and therefore legal - but is it a credible story? Are we supposed to believe that this testosterone-ridden egotist took an attractive young girl, totally enamored of him, back to his hotel room that night and they...what? Just talked? Watched TV? Painted each other's toenails? Come on, people.

But let's give him the benefit of the doubt here. Let's say that they were attracted to each other, but that they restrained themselves. After all, to get where he was, Clemens obviously has to have a lot of discipline, so maybe he drew upon some of that reservoir to keep him from Little Miss Jailbait. If they saw each other in the intervening time, between 1990 and 1993, when she turned 18 and moved to Nashville to destroy herself become a star, are we supposed to believe that they acted with similar restraint each of those times?

McCready did not say that she never saw Clemens between the ages of 15 and 18, just that the relationship did not turn sexual until then. I find it extremely hard to believe that someone as self-absorbed and impressed with himself as Roger Clemens would be able to keep seeing this young girl who seemingly threw herself at him and be able to keep turning her down. (And if you have any doubts about the man's enormous ego, you need look no further than his kids' names: Koby, Kacy, Kory, and Kody. It's surprising he hasn't legally changed his own name to KRoger Klemens.)

In McCready's position, as I mentioned yesterday, it's not necessarily a bad thing for her name to be coming up now, even in this manner. After all, she's releasing a new album, filming a documentary about her life and starting a reality show. She needs all the free press she can get. There are probably thousands, maybe millions of people who heard of her for the first time ever yesterday (yet more evidence that she should not be referred to as a "star"), and who therefore may be more inclined to watch her show, buy her CD, and/or pay $9 to go see here movie. Which will probably go straight to video anyway. So never mind.

Richard Emery, the lawyer defending Brian McNamee in the defamation lawsuit filed against him by Clemens has been very clear about his motives in this:

"If the case heads to trial and is not dismissed, as we feel it should be, we will be calling [McCready] as a witness," Emery said.

"The point is whether he was damaged by the allegations that he used steroids - he claims he was hurt. But if there are other women - and there's not just one case, but many - and he holds himself out as a family man and an American paradigm, it's relevant."

"None of this would have been revealed but for his lawsuit and sanctimonious testimony before Congress."

Let me sum those three points up for you:

1) Be afraid. Be very afraid. If you let this go to trial, your reputation will be forever sullied, whether it deserves to be or not.

B) We have evidence that you have cheated on your wife with other women, too. We brought this one up because she's a big name (or at least she is now), but there are others. Do you want everyone to learn about those?

iii) This is all your fault.

That second point may just be a threat, or it may be the real thing, but Emery suggests that there are "many" cases like this one, and he's basically daring Clemens to keep going with this lawsuit, so they can bring more women forward. Time will tell if they actually have anything (or anyone) else up their sleeve.

Clemens and his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, look rather foolish now, after denying any wrongdoing when this story broke yesterday. According to Hardin:

"At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her."

Well, whether it was illegal or not is still up for debate, but cheating on your wife definitely qualifies as "inappropriate or improper" in most people's minds. And if the woman herself is admitting it, there's not much room for explanation on Clemens part about this denial. He either lied to his lawyer or his lawyer lied to us. It's that simple.

Maybe he'll tell us that she "misremembers" having had sex with him regularly for ten years?