Most baseball players accused of using steroids try to whimper and prevaricate and dodge their way out of trouble, but not Roger Clemens. True to his intimidating on-field persona, The Rocket is going at this thing head-on, sneering and snarling like some mad-dog of denial - no slinking away or pleading the fifth for Roger.

Yesterday, Roger took his biggest swing yet at the credibility of the man responsible for all his present troubles, former trainer Brian McNamee, who told Mitchell Report investigators that Roger Clemens used steroids and HGH. Clemens, in the wake of filing a defamation suit, called a press conference in Houston, in which he played a tape of a phone conversation he had with McNamee - a 17-minute exchange in which Clemens comes off like a self-pitying bully, and McNamee like a scared, groveling emotional wreck.

Clearly, Clemens hoped the tape would show that, at the very least, McNamee was wavering in his assertions. At one point McNamee says:

It is what it is, and it's not good. And I want it to go away. And I'm with you. I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too. But it has nothing to do with you. But I would like to sit down with you in person and talk with you.

McNamee, some have contended, fabricated the allegations against Clemens so he would have something juicy to give federal investigators who were threatening him with jail-time. This is what Roger wants us to think about as we listen to the tape and read the transcript. Unfortunately, we can't help thinking about certain other things in the tape, like this from Clemens:

I didn't do it, this, you know, all this stuff. And I just, like I said, I'm numb to everything. And we get, you know, [wife] Deb is, you know, she's a mess. And I mean, like you said, when it affects Brian, you know, I got [son] Koby in the game, and he's getting, he's getting crushed.

The cynic will say, "Gee. Roger knew the conversation was being taped, so he threw in a bunch of self-pity about how unhappy his wife is and how much crap his kid is getting. The whole thing is basically a performance."

Clearly, the McNamee conversation was a set-up, and it was a careful one too. So careful that at no point does Roger come out and specifically call upon McNamee to recant his allegations, a move that would've opened Roger up to charges of attempting to coerce a federal witness. It wasn't Roger's intent to make McNamee go back on the accusations anyway - the whole point of the charade was to paint Roger as the victim and McNamee as a back-stabbing weasel.

Who knows if any of this will actually work. It's possible people will see Roger's vehemence as proof that he's telling the truth, but it's equally possible people will view him as a desperate guy who will try anything short of murder to get back his reputation. Either way, it's obvious that Roger has no intention of backing down. He's accepted Congress's invitation to appear, and has said he will "tell the truth."

The ball is in Brian McNamee's court now, and it will be fascinating to see what he himself says when the House Oversight Committee begins questioning him - with Roger Clemens sitting at the same table.