Lacy Clay’s question for hurler Roger Clemens at yesterday’s Congressional hearing may have seemed like a softball, but it actually touched on another baseball controversy - one not quite as hot as performance-enhancing drugs, though compelling all the same.

Clay is a member of the House Oversight Committee, which quizzed Clemens and his former trainer on steroids for about five hours Wednesday.

When Clay’s turn to cross-examine Clemens came, he used it to pass on an inquiry from a colleague not on the committee: Mike Capuano, a Massachusetts congressman whose district includes Fenway Park, where Clemens got his start with the Boston Red Sox.

“What uniform are you going to wear to the Hall of Fame?” Clay asked on behalf of his fellow Democrat.

However, as an astute commenter in our previous post noted, the choice is not actually Clemens’ to make.

See, when the game’s greats go into the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, their plaque shows them wearing a ball cap. For players like Stan Musial or Ozzie Smith, who came to prominence with only one franchise, the decision of which logo to display is a no-brainer.

Yet as the free agency era progressed, there were more Hall of Famers who, like Clemens, had extended service with several teams. For a time, those players were allowed to chose which team they wanted to represent.

But that changed around five years ago, amid scuttlebutt that clubs were offering perks such as personal service contracts and retired numbers for players to wear their cap into the hall.

The rule affected players like catcher Gary Carter, who wanted to wear a New York Mets cap - whom he won a championship with - but instead was told his plaque would have him wearing a Montreal Expos cap, which Carter donned for much of his career.

Salon.com sports columnist King Kaufman, who used to live in St. Louis, wrote about the issue in 2003:

We are squarely into the era of Hall of Fame plaque cap controversies, which has to be one of the dumbest categories of controversy ever, right up there with whether some yutz on a reality show is or is not an actual bachelor. The era started when Wade Boggs took some cash from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, with whom he played out the string, to wear their butt-ugly cap on his plaque. After that the Hall of Fame took the decision away from players, and they’ll get it back when they learn to behave and not a minute sooner.

The Hall’s view is that it’s a museum, and its responsibility is to history, not to the whims of an individual player…

Ironically, the hook for Kaufman’s column was none other than Clemens himself, who threatened to boycott the Hall of Fame ceremony if his plaque did not show him wearing a Yankee cap.

Of course, given yesterday’s showdown on Capitol Hill, Clemens probably has more to be concerned about these days than what hat he will wear into the hall - if he gets there at all.