Report: Clemens had affair with underage Mindy McCready

'duk

Mon, Apr 28, 2008, 9:28 a.m.

Just when you thought Roger Clemens couldn't find himself in any more controversy comes this bombshell report from the New York Daily 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.

Pretty jaw dropping, right? We could have read this morning that the Democrats would be allowing John McCain to run unopposed this fall and it would have been less surprising than discovering the allegations that the Rocket and McCready had some sort of Elvis-Priscilla thing going on.

Rusty Hardin, Clemens' lawyer, admits that his client considers McCready a "close family friend," but denies that Clemens ever "had a sexual relationship with her." Hardin also believes that this report will not have any bearing on the defamation suit against McNamee for his involvement in the Mitchell Report. Still, you have to believe the damage control alert is blaring its loudest siren over in Clemens' camp.

There's more to come on this story and it'll be interesting to see how McCready responds to the news. Considering that the 32-year-old country singer has gone through her share of troubles in recent years and is trying to resurrect a crashed-and-burned career, she's going to have to fight off questions as to why this news surfaced at this moment in time.

Yet it's going to be Clemens who will have to deal with the enormous fallout, whether the allegations are true or not. There aren't many things that America likes less than a cheating ballplayer, but a man who cheats on his family with an underage girl is no doubt one of them.