Heyman | How McNamee will get to Cooperstown before Clemens

Brian McNamee, the former trainer of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte who admitted supplying steroids to Clemens, is playing baseball for an adult team — the Long Island Tides — in Cooperstown this week, and McNamee saw the irony in the location of the game.

“I always said I’d get there before Clemens,” McNamee said.

McNamee is recalled for admitting he procured the PEDs when questioned by the federal government, and gained a measure of unwanted fame after he made the Mitchell Report by cooperating with Major League Baseball.

He is busy on Long Island training mostly regular people and a few kids in college with big-league dreams. He’s also a spokesman for the American Nutrition Store in Everett, Mass., the energy drink SEX (which stands for Strength, Endurance and Acceleration) and Cardillo weight belts.

He generally lays low except for the occasional media appearance where he tells the truth about steroids, MLB and his involvement. He has one other goal.

“I want to mend some broken fences and bridges, and am trying to move forward every day,” McNamee said. (He hasn’t been in touch with either of his two most famous clients, though, so he is speaking of other bridges.)

When Clemens publicly disputed McNamee’s story, the pitcher was tried for perjury, but acquitted when McNamee’s credibility was challenged. With a preponderance of evidence supporting McNamee (even if a jury wouldn’t convict the all-time great pitcher), though, Clemens’ insurer agreed to pay a significant settlement for the pitcher for defaming McNamee (the trainer is prevented from saying how much he received, but part of it went to a trust for his kids, he said).

He also doesn’t relish the idea of Clemens getting into the Hall of Fame someday (he is slowly trending upward, though time is running out; he reached 57.3 percent in the most recent vote, his sixth on the ballot), though McNamee hasn’t campaigned against him. In any case, McNamee is technically correct that he will get to the idyllic upstate New York hamlet (with the over-45 Tides, which plays a regular schedule of games) before his former client, the seven-time Cy Young winner.