The McNamee Baseball Grounds

If you can visualize with me the title of this article on a sign at a youth baseball facility, you can see that there is a chance for Brian McNamee, accused sellout, to come out of this entire thing as a definite hero. The bipartisan episode that took place at the Congressional Hearings turned the entire event into a circus, ran by actual elephants who just wanted to get The Rocket's autograph and on his good side--which thankfully was all summed up perfectly in Chairman Waxman's closing statements. Taking a step back and looking at it as a whole, McNamee never had any intention of destroying Clemens' image or anyone else's for that matter until he was himself called a liar. He was asked to tell the entire truth from the beginning, which unfortunately he avoided to do, but only out of his own compassion. I wouldn't want to hand over hard evidence incriminating a friend of mine, for I would hope that my testimony alone would be enough--that is until I'm called a liar on the front of the "USA Today." A lot of people look at McNamee as a guy that's just trying to make a quick buck during his 15 minutes, when in reality he was simply trying to not commit perjury, after trying to not be a jerk.

Apparently a dealer -- on behalf of Brian McNamee -- has posted all of his Roger Clemens memorabilia on eBay....which is good considering that he was originally going to just throw it away. An estimated $75,000 could be fetched for the items, and I think there would be nothing better to do with the money than to put it to good public use. Spreading good clean baseball would be a great boost for his public image, but more importantly, his 80% of the total sales would be a great donation to start a nice little McNamee Baseball Foundation or something similar.

In a short period of time, McNamee was bombarded by investigators, Senators, the media, and a Congressional Hearing, but only time will tell if the whole thing merely afforded him the opportunity to just make that quick buck, or if he will use his past experiences and newfound national attention to do some good things for the game.