The New York Daily News’ Bob Raissman deserves considerable credit for coaxing a quote or twelve from the one voice we’ve been waiting to hear from since Wednesday afternoon. Oh my goodness gracious, it’s WCBS’ Suzyn Waldman :

Like the rest of us, Waldman watched Clemens and Brian McNamee testify Wednesday during the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Mitchell Report. Someone interrupted Waldman with a simple question as she prepared for last night’s WCBS-AM “Hot Stove” show.

Did Clemens lie to the committee?

“It didn’t come out very well, did it?” Waldman, the Yankees radio analyst, said yesterday.

“I think anyone who was around the Yankees the year Brian McNamee was a trainer, and knows what went on there, has a visceral reaction to him,” Waldman said. “That being said, Roger is adamant, but there are so many things that are wrong I have no idea how you get out of it at this point.”

“There’s a lot I don’t get, but what sticks in my craw and what I keep coming back to, is why would Roger do this if he didn’t believe he was being wronged in some way?” Waldman asked. “Why would Roger do this? That’s what I want to know. Why would he spend $1,000 an hour on a lawyer, go to Congress, stand there an answer the questions – to protect what?”

Waldman has covered Andy Pettitte for his entire Bombers career and will be interviewing him regularly this season. The committee members did not get that chance. Nor did they care to.

“If it was going to be Andy Pettitte’s testimony they kept harping on, and if they were saying Andy Pettitte was honest – and I’m not saying he’s not – he should have been in that room,” Waldman said. “I think Andy absolutely told the truth. And I think it killed him to do it.”

Still, Waldman believes the polticians have every right to stick their beaks into the business of sports.

“I’m not one of these people who thinks government has no place in this,” Waldman said. “And it’s for one reason: What sports has become in this country, monetarily and culturally, is so important that if baseball and football cannot clean up their own act somebody else has to.”