ROGER CLEMENS, WHOSE hard throws intimidated even the toughest batters and turned him into one of the best pitchers in baseball history, was acquitted Monday of charges that he lied to Congress in 2008 when he insisted he never used steroids or human growth hormone during his remarkably lengthy career.

The verdict was rendered by a panel of eight women and four men who are largely uninterested in baseball. It was a major, especially painful, defeat for the government in its second failed attempt at convicting a player whose legal problems highlighted baseball’s continuing drug woes.

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