McNamee expected to testify at Clemens perjury trial

Long Beach resident Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens’s former trainer and the chief accuser in the 2007 Mitchell Report on the use of steroids and human growth hormone in Major League Baseball, was expected to testify against Clemens this week in the pitcher’s federal perjury trial.

McNamee is one of the government’s star witnesses against Clemens, who prosecutors claim lied to Congress in 2008, when he said he never used performance-enhancing drugs.

In 2010, Clemens pleaded not guilty after a federal grand jury indicted him on six felony counts involving perjury, making false statements and obstruction of Congress.

McNamee was slated to take the stand before U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton in Washington, D.C., where, observers predicted, he would testify that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone between 1998 and 2001. Clemens’s attorneys have publicly denied McNamee’s allegations.

In 2008, McNamee, a Queens native and Clemens’s former personal trainer, told New York magazine that he had moved to Long Beach to protect his family and escape media attention. McNamee was unavailable for comment.

His 2010 book, “Death, Taxes, and Mac: Brian McNamee in His Own Words,” tells his side of the story as it relates to the Clemens steroids controversy. The former Archbishop Molloy High School all-star and St. John’s University standout fell short of his professional baseball dreams, according to the book’s synopsis, but joined the Yankees in the mid-1990s as a batting practice pitcher and bullpen catcher. That led to a job as the head strength and conditioning coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, where McNamee met Clemens.

Locals who know McNamee describe him as an amiable guy who has devoted his time to working with children and is looking to move on with his life. Despite the media attention over the past several years, McNamee has gone from training major leaguers to kids, often volunteered to teach baseball and training.