Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens allegedly carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready (pictured right), according to the NY Daily News.
The paper claims they have several sources that confirm the relationship was indeed a romance. Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, when he meet McCready who was then a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar.
Contacted by the Daily News Sunday through his lawyer Rusty Hardin, Clemens doesn’t deny a long-term friendship with McCready, but says there is no sexual nature to the relationship.
Clemens, under investigation for perjury for denying using using steroids and human growth hormone, has already endured the embarrassment of publicly admitting his wife’s own human growth hormone use, having photos of bloody gauze and needles linked to him and embarrassing scrutiny of an alleged injection-site abscess on his buttocks.
Clemens’ filed suit against his former personal trainer Brian McNamee the night the legendary baseball pitcher appeared with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes.” The suit claimed that 15 of McNamee’s allegations in the now infamous Mitchell Major League Steroid Abuse Report had “injured Clemens’ reputation and exposed him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and financial injury.” Beyond those injuries are the more serious chance that the reports could seriously damage Clemens legacy as a baseball player and keep him out of the Hall of Fame.
These new revelations of a long term affair could damage his claims of an unsullied character that are central to the defamation suit against McNamee, that attempts to clear his name. Vivid details of the affair could surface in several media projects that McCready is involved with, including a documentary that begins filming today in Nashville, a new album and a reality show.
Since a central issue in Clemens’ suit against McNamee is Roger’s reputation being proved to be a philanderer, could weaken his case.
While Clemens’ lawyer Rusty Hardin, denies that his client’s long-term relationship with country singer Mindy McCready involved sex, he also emphasized that an affair would be irrelevant to the defamation suit.
Meanwhile lawyer Richard Emery, a Manhattan-based First Amendment specialist brought onto McNamee’s legal team, is licking his chops with this new ammunition. He told the Daily News that he would seek to depose McCready, in part because a habit of infidelity would undermine whatever claims Clemens had to an undamaged reputation.
“He brought it on by putting his reputation at issue,” Emery told The News. “He can’t cabin off his reputation with respect to the use of steroids from the rest of his reputation. If he has a reputation as a cheater, liar, philanderer, his damages are lessened.”
McCready who hit stardom in the mid-1990s when her debut album ‘Ten Thousand Angels’ went platinum, did not comment on the allegations. McCready, is currently attempting a career comeback following a string of legal and personal woes.
