Strip away the legalese, and the trial of Roger Clemens is a tale of two men: the baseball star and his trainer. The pair rose together to the heights of their professions only to become bitter enemies who destroyed each other’s reputations as stand-up family men who were the best at what they did.

The mutual damage is bound to get worse over the next few weeks as the retired pitcher is tried on charges he lied to Congress when he denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens’ former trainer, Brian McNamee, says he repeatedly injected his big-name client with steroids and human growth hormone and even saved some of the needles and gauze.

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Retired pitcher Roger Clemens will face criminal charges of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs. He will be tried in federal court in the District of Columbia. 2007 Associated Press file

Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens’ former trainer, fabricated evidence, Clemens’ lawyers say. The Associated Press

Clemens says McNamee fabricated the evidence with designs on extortion. McNamee says Clemens “has led a full-court attack on my credibility.”

Since McNamee’s allegations were revealed in December 2007 with the publication of an investigative report for Major League Baseball, Clemens’ Hall of Fame prospects have been destroyed. His image as a devoted husband and father has been tarnished by reports of a list of other women on the road.

McNamee has been accused of worse than infidelity. Clemens’ lawyers claim they have evidence that their client’s chief accuser sexually assaulted an unconscious woman after giving her a date rape drug.

“McNamee was good at what he did — helping me exercise, diet and stay in shape,” Clemens said in congressional testimony during his last public face-off with McNamee in 2008. Clemens’ denials of McNamee’s accusations under oath before Congress led to the criminal charges he faces at trial in federal court in the District of Columbia.

“We shared an interest in grueling, military-style workouts, but I never asked him nor did he ever give me steroids or human growth hormone,” Clemens told lawmakers. “I had no idea that this man would exploit the trust I gave him to try to save his own skin by making up lies that have devastated me and my family.”

It’s a long fall from their 10-year friendship built in big league clubhouses and weight rooms. They were bound from the time they met in 1998, when McNamee got a job as the strength and conditioning coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, Clemens’ team at the time.

A lifelong Queens resident and one-time New York City police officer who worked undercover, McNamee had been a baseball catcher at St. John’s University. In 1993, McNamee got a job as a bullpen catcher and batting practice pitcher for the New York Yankees. That led to the job with the Blue Jays where he began working with Clemens.

Both men lived in the hotel attached to the team’s stadium. McNamee says in that first Toronto summer of 1998, Clemens gave him needles and vials labeled as the steroid Winstrol and asked for his help injecting them. McNamee said he injected Clemens in the buttocks repeatedly over the next several weeks in Clemens’ hotel apartment and his performance showed remarkable improvement.

The next year, Clemens was traded to the Yankees and persuaded the team to hire McNamee as the assistant strength and conditioning coach when his contract with the Blue Jays was up in 2000. McNamee had to be on the team’s staff to ride on the team charters, but Clemens covered part of his salary and also paid him for personal training in the off-season at home in Houston.

McNamee says after he arrived, Clemens made clear he was ready to use steroids again and the trainer suggested he also try human growth hormone. McNamee says during the latter part of the regular season, he injected the star pitcher repeatedly with both drugs at Clemens’ New York apartment. This time, McNamee said, he was supplying the drugs.

The next season, 2001, was Clemens’ best with the Yankees. He finished at 20-3 and won his sixth Cy Young Award, and reporters looking for his secret wrote about his intense training sessions with McNamee.

On July 13, 2001, a USA Today article described workouts including long-distance running, sprints, heavy legwork and 600 to 2,000 stomach crunches.

“The visible benefits on Clemens are thick legs that provide the drive to keep his fastball humming at 95 mph, and muscled arms that reduce the wear and tear of throwing a splitter,” the article said.

Newsday reported Sept. 10, 2001, that Clemens was lucky to have played for Toronto because it gave him the chance to meet McNamee, his “secret weapon” and “workout guru.”

McNamee now claims that their “secret weapon” that summer included more steroid injections. But after that season, McNamee said, Clemens never asked for drugs again.

According to Clemens, 2001 was also the year their friendship began slowly unraveling because of events that he wouldn’t discover until much later.

During a Yankee road trip to play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in October 2001, police reports said McNamee was seen having sex with an incoherent woman in a St. Petersburg hotel pool. The woman told police she could not remember what happened. The date rape drug GHB was found in her system.

McNamee was never charged, but he lied to investigators, including denying he worked for the Yankees. His contract was not renewed. McNamee told police he was trying to rescue the woman from drowning in the pool.

McNamee says around this time he decided he needed to protect himself because “while I liked and admired Roger Clemens, I don’t think that I ever really trusted him.” He says he took some of the steroid vials, needles and gauze he used to wipe up Clemens’ blood and saved it in his basement.

Clemens’ attorneys say McNamee fabricated the evidence after the Florida investigation because he was worried about losing his Yankee job and wanted something to persuade Clemens to keep employing him. But they said Clemens believed his friend’s explanation of what happened in the pool and hired him as a personal trainer even though he was no longer allowed in the Yankee clubhouse.

In 2006, a newspaper reported that Clemens and McNamee were part of a criminal inquiry into performance-enhancing drugs. Both denied Clemens used steroids, and Clemens told The New York Times, “I’ll continue to use Mac to train me. He’s one of a kind.”

That would change within a year.

Federal investigators discovered McNamee had been buying drugs and pressured him to reveal the ultimate recipients to avoid prosecution. He said he supplied Clemens and other players, including Yankees Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, both now retired. Pettitte and Knoblauch have acknowledged they got drugs from McNamee.

McNamee told Congress he didn’t want to expose the players but faced perjury charges if he lied.

“It is painful beyond words to know that my name will be forever linked with scandal in the sport I love,” he said.

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