[NY Daily News] Clemens had 10-year affair with country singer Mindy McCready

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/b...sources_roger_clemens_had_10year_fling_w.html

ources: Roger Clemens had 10-year fling with country star Mindy McCready

By TERI THOMPSON and NATHANIEL VINTON in New York and CHRISTIAN RED in Nashville
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS

Updated Monday, April 28th 2008, 12:03 AM
Antonelli/News


Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready, a romance that began when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar and Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, several sources have told the Daily News.

The revelations could torpedo claims of an unsullied character that are central to the defamation suit Clemens filed Jan. 6 against his former personal trainer Brian McNamee. Vivid details of the affair could surface in several media projects that McCready is involved with - including a documentary that begins filming today in Nashville, a new album and a reality show.

McCready, who lives on a quiet, tree-lined street in Nashville, is attempting a career comeback following a string of legal and personal woes.

Contacted by the Daily News Sunday through his lawyer Rusty Hardin, Clemens confirmed a long-term relationship but denied that it was of a sexual nature.

"He flatly denies having had any kind of an inappropriate relationship with her," Hardin said. "He's considered her a close family friend. ... He has never had a sexual relationship with her."

Hardin said the Rocket's wife, Debbie, knew McCready and that the singer had traveled on his plane.

From a public relations standpoint, Clemens' decision to file the suit against McNamee the night the Rocket appeared with Mike Wallace on "60 Minutes" could end up being the biggest risk he has taken yet. Clemens, under investigation for perjury, has already endured the ignominy of publicly admitting his wife's own human growth hormone use, having photos of bloody gauze and needles linked to him and embarrassing scrutiny of an alleged injection-site abscess on his buttocks.

'Anything is fair game'

The romantic link to McCready, which spanned his stints with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros, could emerge as a trump card for McNamee's legal team.

"The issue in Roger's suit against McNamee is Roger's reputation and how it has been damaged," said Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers who is handling the defamation suit. "If it's proved that he's a philanderer, his reputation is already damaged. When you sue for defamation, you put your whole reputation in the community at issue. Anything is fair game, including his claim of sanctimonious purity. We would cross-examine him and other witnesses who might impact on his alleged behavior. We would probably subpoena her and witnesses who knew [of the relationship]. He's a 'family man' - he implies that. It's about what his damages are. All is fair game."

The sources asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation. Hardin said Sunday he had no knowledge of an affair.

McNamee, who worked with and traveled with Clemens extensively over the last decade, has confirmed that he saw Clemens and McCready together on many occasions, including in Clemens' room at his apartment in the former SkyDome, now Rogers Centre, in Toronto, and that Clemens talked of McCready often. Should McNamee decide to countersue for defamation, McCready could surface as a witness for that case as well.

According to sources, Clemens was with his Red Sox teammates in a Fort Myers, Fla., bar when then-teenager McCready caught his eye. After Clemens threw a shirt with his and several teammates' signatures onstage, an introduction was made.

"It was love at first sight, no doubt about it," said a source with intimate knowledge of the relationship.

According to the source, McCready did not learn that Clemens was married to Debbie Clemens until McCready attended a baseball game with her two younger brothers and read Clemens' bio in the program. The source says that McCready was too young to be angered by the news that Clemens was taken.

'She's lived life out loud'

After hitting stardom in the mid-1990s - her debut album "Ten Thousand Angels" went platinum - McCready continued to see Clemens, according to the sources, although there were several breaks along the way when McCready was involved with other men. She was briefly engaged to actor Dean Cain and later was in an abusive relationship with Billy McKnight - the father of her only child, Zander.

Her personal life, however, soon played out like a bad country song. There was a 2004 arrest for prescription fraud. A near-overdose while pregnant. A guilty plea by McKnight for assaulting McCready. And her stint in a Tennessee jail last year after violating probation, for allegedly hitting her mother in Florida.

"She's lived a life out loud," says one of her record managers, John Dotson. Dotson and Iconic Records President Michael Fancher are pooling their talents with Los Angeles producer Blake Freeman to resurrect McCready's career.

"She's trying to get back to where she was early in her career," says Freeman, who is the executive producer on McCready's "Fallen Angel" documentary and her "Mending Mindy" reality series. "She's a great person, and this will help her get back in the good graces with the industry."

Partied with Michael Jordan

Even during her troubles, the sources say Clemens was never far from McCready. Clemens would frequently send bundles of cash in FedEx packages, they say, as she dealt with her legal issues. According to one of the sources, Clemens even reached out to McCready through an intermediary while she was in jail last year, although McCready had cut ties with the Rocket as far back as 2006.

Sources say that when McCready, now 32, and Clemens were together, there was barely any friction between them. The two were known to take lavish trips to Las Vegas and New York. One time, McCready attended a Yankees game at the Stadium and jokingly donned a catcher's mask near the home dugout. During another Big Apple excursion, the two holed up in the trendy SoHo Grand and later partied with Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jordan. McCready, according to a source, even bummed a cigar off His Airness to give to Clemens. There were personal love missives to Clemens hidden in McCready's album liner notes.

And it wasn't just McCready benefitting from Clemens' generosity. McCready and her brothers used the Rocket's plane for quick hops to to the Florida Keys. Clemens also bought golf clubs for McCready's father, Tim, according to the source with knowledge of the affair.

The seven-time Cy Young Award winner's orchestrated public relations blitz began shortly after the Dec. 13 release of the Mitchell Report on drug use in baseball. It focused as much on Clemens' family-man reputation as it did on McNamee's checkered past and apparent lies about his involvement in an incident in Florida in 2001 for which he was investigated for sexual assault. No charges were ever filed in that case, but Clemens' lawyer Hardin papered the media with accounts of the incident.

The relationship with McCready paints a very different picture of Clemens than the one drawn by Jose Canseco in his book "Juiced," where he went out of his way to say that Clemens was one of very few professional ballplayers who was faithful to his wife.

And it smacks of a different Clemens than the one who spoke passionately of his family in his opening remarks to Congress Feb. 13. Debbie Clemens was seated behind her husband at the hearing.

"Anyone who has spent time around me knows that my family is and has always been my top priority," a portion of the statement read. "My wife, Debbie, and my sons - Koby, Kory, Kacy and Kody - mean more to me than anything in the world. Having said that, baseball has definitely provided me with significant opportunities off the field."