Roger Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee rages against steroids
By Michael O'keeffe / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, March 16, 2012


The biggest steroid pushers in America don’t sell drugs on street corners, Brian McNamee told 165 high school guidance counselors on Thursday. The biggest pushers, Roger Clemens’ former trainer said, are the coaches who teach their young athletes to win at all costs.


Too many coaches — even at the high school and youth sports levels — measure success solely by wins and losses, McNamee said at Adelphi University in Garden City, L.I. Too many coaches, he added, tell their kids, “ If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”


“Most coaches don’t care about you as long as you put yourself in a position for the team to win,” McNamee said.


McNamee gave the feature presentation — entitled “Creating a Safe Environment for Our Student-Athletes” — at the Nassau Counselors Association’s annual conference. It was the first public lecture the former Yankee assistant strength and conditioning coach has given since he identified Clemens as a steroid user in Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report, which was released in December 2007.


Christina D’Angelo, a member of the counselor association’s executive board and a counselor at Lynbrook High School, said the organization invited McNamee to speak because it wanted to address the pressures on student-athletes.


McNamee, now the general manager of baseball operations at the Long Island Sports Complex in Freeport, L.I., will be a star prosecution witness when Clemens is tried on perjury charges in Washington next month. Federal prosecutors say Clemens, a one-time lock for the Hall of Fame, lied to Congress during a hearing on the Mitchell Report in 2008. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton declared a mistrial last summer after prosecutors showed the jury evidence that the judge had barred.


Jury selection for the new trial begins April 16.
McNamee told investigators that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone and will testify to that in Clemens’ trial.


The longtime trainer said the judge’s gag order prevented him from talking about Clemens or the impending trial, but he felt compelled to talk about performance-enhancing drugs because of his role in baseball’s steroid scandal. He donated the $200 honorarium he received for his talk to Clint Faught of the Taylor Hooton Foundation, an organization dedicated to educating young athletes about steroids.


“I don’t want to make money from my mistakes,” said McNamee, who has struggled financially and professional in the wake of the Mitchell Report’s release.