Here is the latest on Roger Clemens. He has become a lighting rod for controversy. What are your thoughts?
Years before Mindy McCready brought
Roger Clemens home for breakfast, the country crooner’s mother says she
confronted her daughter about the nature of her relationship with the
Rocket Man.
“Obviously it’s a question I had to ask. A mother wants to know
what’s going on,” Gayle McCready Inge told the Herald yesterday. “As a
mother, I was told nothing.”
The Daily News of New York quoted sources yesterday as saying the
green-eyed, honey-haired McCready had a 10-year fling with the
controversial Cy Young Award winner after he saw her singing karaoke in
a Florida bar in 1991, when she was 15 and he was still pitching for
the Red Sox.
By the time McCready brought Clemens, a married father of four, home
to Fort Myers for breakfast “a couple of years ago” - and Inge’s
husband cooked him bacon, sausage and eggs - Inge said she had come to
believe the relationship was strictly platonic.
“I knew Roger Clemens to be a friend of hers. She has all kinds of
friends,” Inge said. “Besides, Mindy wasn’t the type to hold much back.
We only met him that one time. We thought he was very, very nice.”
Clemens’ Houston attorney Rusty Hardin, did not return a call
yesterday from the Herald. But he told the Daily News on Clemens’
behalf, “He’s considered (McCready) a close family friend. He has never
had a sexual relationship with her.”
For her part, Inge doesn’t believe the relationship with Clemens
began when her daughter was a minor. “I don’t believe that she was 15.
She was driving when she met him,” Inge said.
As far as Inge knows, McCready, 32, and Clemens, 45, are still pals.
“I hope this (romance rumor) doesn’t affect that,” Inge said. “The allegations are horrible and I really feel for his family.”
As Clemens continues to defend against allegations he used steroids
to enhance his on-the-field performance, years of personal setbacks,
including jail time, have kept McCready off the charts. Her mother said
she has a new album coming out and is hoping to launch a reality TV
show.
Mike Brophey, program manager of Boston country music station WKLB,
said McCready had her “heyday” in the mid-1990s with songs like “Guys
Do It All the Time,” but, “We haven’t played much of her music”’ and
listener requests for it have long dried up.
Despite having opened in the shadows of recording giants Tim McGraw,
Alan Jackson and George Strait, “She was a fairly small act in our
business,” Brophey said. “I think she had an awful lot of potential,
but it was never realized.”
McCready, who filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Tennessee in 1997, last
year served a five-month stint in jail after attacking her mother and
resisting arrest. Inge said her daughter, who has a toddler son, had
been drinking and, “There was a lot of tension,” in the family home.
Inge said the altercation “didn’t amount to enough to even make news.”
In 2004, McCready, who was once romantically involved with actor
Dean Cain, was convicted of fraudulently obtaining prescription
painkillers. A year later, while on probation, she was arrested for
driving under the influence of alcohol.
David Dellucci of the Cleveland Indians took exception to Joba Chamberlain pumping his fist and screaming when he was struck out. Dellucci had hit a 3 run homerun the night before against Joba and won the game for his team.
