Clemens’ wife backs HGH story

WASHINGTON— Debbie Clemens testified Friday that her husband was not present when she received a shot of human growth hormone from Roger Clemens’ strength coach — testimony that contradicts the star pitcher’s chief accuser in the perjury trial.

But on cross-examination by the prosecution, she said of her husband’s view of HGH, “I don’t think he thought it was bad.” She added, “It wasn’t like doing heroin.”

When a prosecutor asked if Clemens was mad when she told him about the HGH shot, she testified that his attitude was more that she wasn’t “old enough yet” and didn’t need it: “Why did you think you needed to do that?”

Debbie Clemens said she got the idea from a USA Today story in 2000. “A lot of people in Hollywood were doing it, and it was a youth drug,” she said under questioning from Rusty Hardin, a lawyer for both Roger and Debbie Clemens.

She said she mentioned the topic to the strength coach, Brian McNamee, who has emerged years later as the only person to give firsthand testimony that Roger Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career.

McNamee “talked about this being a good thing,” she said, and gave her a shot a few days later — without her husband’s knowledge.

“It wasn’t really planned,” she added. “It just happened.” McNamee, the government’s key witness against Clemens, testified last month that not only was the star baseball pitcher there, he had summoned McNamee to the couple’s master bathroom in Houston to give Debbie Clemens the drug.