Clemens, McCready: Havin' a Ball?

Baseball great denies having intimate 10-year affair with country star, says they only had platonic relationship

By Gina Serpe Apr 28, 2008 5:29 PMTags
Roger Clemens, Mindy McCreadyDimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com, AP Photo/John Russell

Talk about your odd couples—she's a little bit country, he's a little bit steroid enhanced (allegedly).

The New York Daily News has taken it upon itself to make Monday even less palatable, dropping the bombshell that former New York Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long secret "fling" with troubled country songbird Mindy McCready, beginning when the singer was just 15.

While the baseballer's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, has confirmed that a relationship existed, he denied that it was anything less than honorable or that anything sexual took place between the unlikely duo...and not only because Clemens was a 28-year-old married father of two when he met the teen.

"Mindy McCready is a longtime family friend of Roger Clemens and the Clemens family," Hardin said in a statement Monday. "At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her. It is unfortunate that the Daily News has chosen to report anonymous allegations that are completely unfounded, have no basis in fact, and have nothing to do with Roger's baseball career or the issue of steroid use in baseball."

The Daily News, however, suggested otherwise.

Citing unnamed sources, the tabloid claimed McCready frequently tailed Clemens at ball games and partied with Clemens with the likes of Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jordan, and even hid declarations of love to Clemens in the liner notes of her albums.

During McCready's recent legal woes, ranging from alleged domestic abuse at the hands of her baby daddy and an arrest for prescription-drug fraud, Clemens was financially supporting the singer, per the newspaper, sending her bundles of cash in FedEx packages.

According to the tab's account, McCready met Clemens in a Florida bar when he was still with the Boston Red Sox. They supposedly grew close, even though the period overlaps with her brief engagement to Dean Cain back in 1997.

McCready, 32, has not commented on the newspaper allegations. She is expected to begin filming a new documentary reality show in Nashville this week. Clemens, 45, remains mired in baseball's drug scandal, accused of using steroids and human growth hormone to help power his hugely successful late-career comeback.