* Defense questions whether witness profited from case
* Ex-trainer key to government's perjury case (Updates with defense cross-examination)
By Ian Simpson
WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - The top defense lawyer in ex-baseball star Roger Clemens' perjury trial attacked the credibility of the star prosecution witness on Wednesday, asking, "Do you sometimes just make stuff up?"
As Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee shifted in the witness chair, defense lawyer Rusty Hardin attacked McNamee's motives and recollection of injecting Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
The ex-trainer said Clemens had asked him if he still had a source for anabolic steroids in early 2004, while the pitcher was briefly retired before a comeback with the Houston Astros. That conflicted with a statement McNamee gave investigators when he said his last steroid-related conversation with Clemens was in August 2001.
"Mr. McNamee, do you sometimes just make stuff up?" Hardin asked. "Is that a true statement or did you make it up?"
His voice barely audible, McNamee said: "I didn't make anything up."
McNamee's allegations in U.S. District Court are at the core of prosecution charges that Clemens, one of baseball's greatest pitchers, lied to Congress in 2008 about using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.
Under cross-examination from Hardin, McNamee said he had made mistakes, been forgetful or lied intentionally about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
Hardin attacked McNamee's story that Clemens had approached him to inject him with steroids while with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 shortly after McNamee had joined the team as strength coach.
McNamee, 45, said he did not know if Clemens had been referring to steroids when he mentioned he needed him to give him a "booty shot," an injection in the buttocks.
"THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED"
"Are you telling us that this man who had had this storied career ... asked somebody that he had only known for two months, out of all the people in the world, to all of a sudden give him a steroid shot?" Hardin asked.
"That's what happened," McNamee said.
McNamee also could not recall details of conversations he said he had overheard among Blue Jays players about drug use. The conversations had led him to believe Clemens was using steroids.
"The jury has to rely on your memory of some vague conversations that you just don't remember?" Hardin asked.
"Yes, sir," McNamee answered.
Hardin asked McNamee if he was taking medication or if there other factors that would hurt his memory.
"I'm fine," McNamee said.
Clemens' lawyers also are expected to explore McNamee's alleged problems with alcohol and scrapes with law enforcement.
Hardin raised the issue of whether McNamee tried to profit from his testimony to investigators and a 2007 probe of use in baseball that named Clemens and other players as steroid users.
Grilled by Hardin, McNamee could recall few details about now-scrapped publication plans for his ghost-written autobiography.
Clemens, 49, is being tried for a second time on federal charges of lying in 2008 to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was investigating drug use in Major League Baseball. His first trial ended in a mistrial last year.
Clemens was known as "The Rocket" during a career that ran from 1984 to 2997. He won the Cy Young Award seven times and is among the biggest names implicated in drug use in baseball.
McNamee worked with Clemens when the right-hander pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays and later with the New York Yankees. He also was employed as Clemens' personal trainer. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Eric Beech and Bill Trott)
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