For the Congressional Hearing Impaired

To my great dismay, there are no Congressional hearings scheduled this week that will involve sports figures essentially turning Capitol Hill into the world's most formal sports talk radio studio.

I was in Cleveland on Friday and could have used the midday programming to pass the time. It certainly worked the week before when I was in Los Angeles.

Last Wednesday my day started in a curious way. I ordered my typical Special K cereal from room service and was asked whether I would like milk with it. It was not as puzzling as the time I ordered a Caesar salad and the person taking the order wanted to know what type of dressing I would like with my Caesar salad.

My Special K went soggy as I watched drop-jawed the Roger Clemens Vs. Brian McNamee made for pay-per-view event on C-Span. It was riveting television. The only thing missing was boxing promoter Don King sitting in between Clemens and McNamee instead of a guy named, Charlie Scheeler, who worked for Senator George Mitchell on the Mitchell report.

The Mitchell report of course was about steroid use in baseball, and in that report it was strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee who claimed he injected HGH (that's Human Growth Hormone) into Roger Clemens' buttocks. For the record I got tired of hearing the word buttocks on Wednesday. In fact you might say it became a pain in the….

Instead of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (catchy name by the way) investigating what else could be done to clamp down on the use of illegal substances in baseball, the hearing turned into an investigation of a guest list at a party hosted by Jose Canseco some ten years ago.

In fact, at times I think it was even disputed whether it was a pool party or a barbecue. Whether or not Clemens was at Canseco's party had become such a point of contention that a former nanny was even tracked down to test her memory. The nanny remembered staying overnight at the Canseco house with Clemens' wife and kids.

So it went from pool party to barbecue to slumber party. While I am not sure what we as taxpayers were supposed to get out of this type of testimony, I can say with some degree of certainty that one day there will be a band named Jose Canseco's pool party and there first album will entitled, "A Shot In The Buttocks."

In all seriousness, this was a hearing that needed Mark McGwire saying, "I'm not here to discuss the past," or, "I'm here to be positive about this subject." As frustrating as it was to hear those McGwire quotes from the steroid hearings of the 2005, we have reached a point where the past is better left there.

Clemens has never tested positive for anything, and was never going to change his story which he seems to be positive of. And McNamee certainly was not going to veer from his story because it would unravel all the good will he had built up with federal investigators by giving up all of this confidential stuff. That and the fact McNamee's testimony was in a sworn deposition.

So we did not need a congressional hearing for a Clemens vs. McNamee debate on veracity. To be sure the 2005 hearings put the heat Major League Baseball and its Players Association and the result is a real testing, but last Wednesday was just a joke.

The committee's chairman Representative Henry Waxman told the New York Times, " I'm sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it."

What's this? As public citizens we can get hearings on demand? I have a traffic ticket from ten years ago that I still believe I was wrongly given. Can I get hearing in front of the D.C. City Council?

Clemens' lawyers called Waxman's statements, "unbelievable, disingenuous, and outrageous." In fact, the Clemens' camp blamed Waxman for creating the circus and claimed they wanted to get the hearing called off a few weeks ago.

Lost in the raging debate over what was injected into Roger Clemens' buttocks or his wife's buttocks, or who was at a Jose Canseco party, was one strain of worthwhile questioning from Representative Mark Souder of Indiana.

Representative Souder changed the tone of the hearing when he actually asked a question of real meaning. He had obviously -- and here is a shock -- read the depositions and the Mitchell report and wanted to know more about a conversation between McNamee and former Yankees pitcher David Cone.

In his deposition, McNamee claimed that Cone had spoken to him on a Yankees team flight in 2000 and told him that the owners were not in favor of drug testing but needed a valid excuse to provide the news media when reporters asked about it.

Suddenly Roger Clemens buttocks no longer seemed important. The implication here is that Cone, as New York Yankees player representative to the union, was aware of a desire on that part of Major League Baseball owners not to have steroid testing.

Cone has since said he was surprised to hear his name mentioned during last Wednesday's hearing and that he does not remember having a conversation like that with anyone, much less Brian McNamee.

So the smoking gun was put out. And as baseball fans we should just be put off.

Wizards Week in Review

The just completed Washington Wizards west coast trip road trip only confirmed even more why Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler belonged in this past weekend's All-Star game.

Because of an injured left hip, Butler did not play on the four-game swing, and he was not going to force it for the sake of All-Star glory. If Butler only had designs on playing in the All-Star game he might have tried to play in Los Angeles against the Clippers.

If Butler played last Wednesday in Los Angeles, he could have played on Sunday in New Orleans with a clear mind. Instead he rested and was more concerned with hurting the team by further aggravating the injury to the point where he would have to miss more time after the All-Star break.

Jamison did play and secured the game winner with three-tenths of a second left in last Wednesday's victory over the Clippers. With his head always held high through adversity Jamison has been a beacon when the Wizards have hit rough sailing.

It's almost impossible to engage Jamison in a discussion about what the Wizards don't have (Arenas and Butler). He only wants to talk about what needs to be done.

It is that approach that will put the Wizards in their fourth straight postseason.

Buried in last Tuesday's San Jose Mercury News was a zinger aimed at the Redskins Vinny Cerrato

In the Morning Buzz column by John Ryan, Jim Fassel's surprise at the hiring of Jim Zorn the Redskins was pointed out.

And Ryan noted:

"This will come as no surprise to 49ers fans ... Fassel said one factor in the change of heart (by the Redskins) was the bungling interference of Vinny Cerrato."

Ouch. It sounds like Cerrato is remembered in the San Francisco bay area for his work with the 49ers, but not fondly remembered.

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