MLB | Roger Clemens makes general apology

NEW YORK — Roger Clemens apologized Monday for unspecified mistakes in his personal life, a statement Brian McNamee's lawyers intend to use to attack the pitcher's credibility at trial.

The Daily News reported last week Clemens had a decade-long relationship with country star Mindy McCready that began when she was 15 and an aspiring singer. The newspaper also linked the seven-time Cy Young Award winner to former Manhattan bartender Angela Moyer and Paulette Dean Daly, a former wife of champion golfer John Daly.

"Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry," Clemens said in a statement issued by spokesman Patrick Dorton.

McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, accused the pitcher in the Mitchell Report of using performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001, before players and owners agreed to ban them from baseball. Clemens has repeatedly denied the accusation.

"I think what it says without saying it is that he apparently admits he cheated on his wife and family. And if he cheated on them, I think it's reasonable to assume that he cheated his fans and baseball," Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, said in a telephone interview.

"I think this is all very probative of his behavior and his penchant for denying the truth, and it certainly will come into play in the defamation lawsuit. He certainly doesn't deserve to be compensated for loss of reputation when his reputation, to the extent he ever had it, of being a family man, was totally false and built on a house of cards, a tissue of lies."