Juicing the Game

by Howard Bryant

  To Mike Stanton, a player rep for the Yankees, what changed was that some of the lower-profile players became player representatives. Hinch believed that his fellow players looked to college-educated guys to do the job. It was a serendipitous moment, for now some of the lesser players - could voice concern about subjects that might not normally receive attention. It was in this regard that the steroid question began to take on greater importance to the players. The players with the most to lose finally had the power to speak up. To Hinch, it was one of the least known but most important elements in the negotiation of a drug policy. Baseball’s leadership wanted to take credit for the desire for a policy, but the voice being heard was that of A. J. Hinch, and players like him.

  DEREK JETER described the weeks that followed Ken Caminiti’s bombshell as a witch hunt. The week of Caminiti’s confession, the Yankees were in Chicago for a weekday series against the White Sox. Jeter was the Yankees’ de facto captain, a title that would be officially bestowed upon him the following summer. That made him the primary player spokesman for the team. Talking to the press, never easy, and particularly difficult in New York, was not something Jeter enjoyed, but he understood that being the leader of the legendary Yankees came with certain responsibilities, and he would represent the team, win or lose.

  Jeter was a brilliant baseball player whose game defied description. He was something of a modern-day Jackie Robinson, who lacked a specific strength, but always seemed to excel at whatever facet of the game was needed to win that day’s ballgame. Jeter had never hit 25 home runs in a season and had never stolen 35 bases, yet he consistently proved himself to be a dangerous offensive threat during the course of a ballgame. He was also one of the few players in the game’s history whose signature moments included as much defense as offense.

  Few players of his generation were as wired to play baseball as Derek Jeter. Although not a power hitter, he was a big man, a six-foot-three, 180-pound shortstop, proof of Sandy Alderson’s hypothesis more than a decade earlier that size was being recruited at every position. As a child, Jeter told friends he would one day play shortstop for the New York Yankees. As a professional, he grew up in the crush of the New York lifestyle, the tabloids, and the pressure, yet outside of being caught on camera with various starlets over the years, he did not bring controversy to himself or embarrassment to the Yankees.

  Jeter owned a somewhat odd relationship with the press. He was always accessible, always accountable, and to the visiting writers, a dream to cover. Here he was, the most visible player on the most visible team in baseball, and he was at his locker before and after every game, spoke without confrontation, and was unfailingly polite. Compared to the surly superstars in other cities, who acted as if their talent and wealth absolved them of extending the slightest courtesies, Jeter understood his special status, as well as his good fortune to be playing a game he loved, on a team that did nothing but win, for an outrageous sum of money (his ten-year, $189-million contract was, for a brief moment in time, the richest in baseball history).

  Yet to some of the writers who covered Jeter daily, he was infuriating. Available yet elusive, he spoke in generalities, rarely saying anything provocative, or even insightful. None of this was lost on Jeter. In fact, he adopted the approach intentionally, once calling himself “purposely bland.” Part of the standoff with the writers was a function of New York itself. In most other cities Jeter’s professionalism would be enough. New York wanted more. It wanted a side of Jeter he was loath to give, the human side, the blithe side, the glib and funny side. This was the portion of Derek Jeter he would not give the public. Some wondered if Jeter, calculating, cool, professionally ruthless on a baseball diamond as well as in navigating the thorny politics of the clubhouse, possessed a human side at all.

  Jeter did not flinch when it came time to confront the Caminiti allegations. That did not mean that Jeter did not grow tired of the steroid questions. “I don’t worry about it,” he said, “because I don’t have anything to hide. Does it bother me that I have to deal with questions about steroids? Yeah, in a way, because it’s wasted energy on my part. I’m like, ‘What are you asking me for?’ I’m not going to speak about other guys, about who’s doing what, because I don’t know. It’s frustrating because me, personally, I didn’t do anything.

  “It’s too bad that everyone is getting painted with the same brush,” he said. “But for me, it’s still very simple. Either you have something to hide, or you don’t. I don’t have anything to hide because I didn’t do anything. How many other guys out there can say the same? I don’t know. I just know about me.”

  A few feet from Jeter stood Jason Giambi, the newest Yankee star. In the winter of 2001, Giambi had signed a monstrous contract with the Yankees after six remarkable seasons in Oakland, but despite big numbers he had not quite found his place in New York. He had replaced a popular player, Tino Martinez, who had won four championships during the dynasty, and generally seemed uneasy in the edgy New York environment.

  If there was ever a person happy to be in the world of major league baseball, it was Jason Giambi. Giambi was down-to-earth, an average Joe without the faintest trace of the off-putting sense of entitlement that so many athletes destined for greatness possess from an early age. If anything, Giambi seemed to be just the opposite, a kid tickled that his dream was coming true. He grew up in Southern California, in the middle-class city of West Covina. His father, John, was an executive at a local bank and a diehard Yankee fan. John Giambi idolized Mickey Mantle, and when his two sons reached the major leagues, both would wear either the number seven, or numbers that added up to seven, in honor of their father and the great Mantle.

  Jason Giambi was not, as was the case with Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez, always considered a can’t-miss prospect pegged for the big time. Giambi’s road was more difficult, less predictable, and far more open to scrutiny. That was not to say he didn’t possess gifts. Giambi had impressive hand-eye coordination, but was not quick or fast or particularly gifted defensively. He was drafted by Milwaukee in 1989, but did not sign. Instead, he played college ball at Long Beach State. When he reentered the draft in 1992, Sandy Alderson saw in him a player who would fit in well with his budding philosophy based on on-base percentage.

  Alderson drafted Giambi in the second round, but, in the minors, he did not have a position, and when he arrived in Oakland in 1995, still did not. Mark McGwire was an institution at first base, and Giambi failed first at third base, and then in left field. Giambi was in real danger of becoming what no player ever wanted to be: a twenty-four-year-old designated hitter. As Giambi’s offensive abilities soared, he would be able to joke about those rough days wearing the glove. “In the outfield,” Giambi said crudely one day during an interview, “I was an abortion.” Giambi’s greatness was not a given. He did not hit for great home run power, but was a gap hitter who was projected to hit doubles in addition to maybe 20 home runs a year. Because he was such a defensive liability, his frustrated manager, Art Howe, went to Alderson and the A’s assistant GM Billy Beane and asked that Giambi be traded.

  But Giambi was too talented a hitter for any smart organization to move him. Giambi always possessed a patient eye, and if his home run power were to develop around his ability to drive the ball into both gaps, Billy Beane thought he could become the ultimate offensive machine. Beane understood Giambi’s gifts almost automatically. Giambi didn’t frustrate the A’s management the way most young players did by swinging at everything. He not only hit, he walked. A good hitter’s eye will produce an on-base percentage about sixty to seventy points higher than his batting average. Giambi, at his best, would come close to doubling that. What Giambi didn’t have, or so it seemed at the time, was power.

  Upon his arrival in Oakland, Giambi was like a sponge, thought one Oakland official who recalled his rookie year. Giambi soaked up everything about being a major leaguer. Immediately, he formed a bond with McGwire, who took the rookie under his wing. McGwire and Giambi w
ould be inseparable. Though it was obvious that Giambi would one day be McGwire’s successor at first base, the two men got on very well, with Giambi learning big league life at the altar of Big Mac.

  When McGwire was traded to St. Louis in 1997, Giambi inherited first base. His abilities soared, and Giambi became something he had never been forecast as: a power hitter. Over his first six seasons, Giambi would be one of the few players in major league history to improve his average, home run, and RBI totals for six consecutive years.

  Unlike McGwire, Jason Giambi was gregarious, open, and funny. If McGwire was uncomfortable with the public side of being a major league player, Giambi was a natural. He was an extrovert, disarming and engaging with his teammates, who as the A’s emerged from rebuilding to once again become a powerhouse, began to idolize him as the signature figure in the franchise’s revival.

  What separated Giambi was his disarming personality. There was a moment in 1998 when the A’s were in New York about to play an afternoon game against the Yankees. Giambi had just signed his first million-dollar contract, a three-year, $9-million deal that would take him to his free agent year of 2001. That morning, his teammates congratulated him and he did not hide his pleasure behind the tough-guy persona so many players try to adopt. Giambi was the head brother of a season-long fraternity party, and realized that being paid at all for something he’d do happily for free gave him no reason to complain. He walked around the clubhouse grinning that day. He had made it, and was candid in his belief that while he always believed he was a good baseball player, he never once believed he would become a millionaire playing ball. There was a certain boyishness about Giambi that day that would stay with him for the majority of his Oakland years. He loved being a major leaguer, and his natural personality shone through.

  Giambi was legendary for his bachelor-style appetites, a welcome return to the old-style booze-and-babes player who had all but disappeared in an era of corporate imaging. Under his uniform, he wore T-shirts with sayings such as “Drive It Like You Stole It,” or “Party Like a Rock Star, Hammer Like a Porn Star, Hit Like an All-Star.” For the press, he made great copy. One night in Chicago, Giambi shared his philosophy about hitting. The way he saw it, a player had to feel “sexy” at the plate in order to hit well. Another time, in Tampa, Giambi stepped out of a limousine with a drink in hand and noticed a group of reporters, all male, heading out to dinner. Giambi scanned the group, which counted a half dozen, and said to one, “Dude, bad numbers to run the beef with,” meaning that it was virtually impossible to pick up girls with such a large group. Most star players, especially those in New York or Boston, were so wary of reporters that they would barely have made eye contact.

  During one game against the Red Sox in Oakland, a naked fan leaped from the crowd and ran onto the field, doing cartwheels on the infield dirt. To many Red Sox and Oakland players, it was a weird, potentially dangerous moment. At least a dozen times a season, some maniac fan would run onto the field, and each time, in the back of the players’ minds, the possibility of violence existed. The 1993 stabbing of tennis player Monica Seles was a watershed moment. Fan aggression seemed to be rising in sports, and the players were actually extremely vulnerable. Giambi, though, was cool. Afterward, he was asked if he had been nervous when the streaker approached him. “No, I wasn’t afraid of him,” Giambi said. “Actually, he had quite a cock.”

  Affable, funny, confident, with something of a rebellious but never disrespectful quality, Jason Giambi was the perfect front man for a young team bursting onto the scene. He was also the kind of glib, California-cool personality marketing departments salivated over. He had the looks, longish hair, goatee, and two enormous shoulder tattoos that went with the party-hard persona. On the field, Giambi was brilliant. By 1999, it was clear that he was not only a good offensive player, but a great one. The A’s could not catch a spirited Boston club for the wild card playoff spot that year, but the next season they won their first division title since 1992, and Giambi was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player.

  That postseason, the upstart A’s would nearly topple the defending world champion Yankees in a memorable five-game Division Series. George Steinbrenner was watching. Giambi would be a free agent after the 2001 season, and Brian Cashman was told to monitor Giambi all season. For most of Giambi’s final year in Oakland, the Yankees dispatched a scout to nearly all of his games. For the second straight year, the aging Yankees were being challenged by Giambi and the A’s. During a classic August duel between the two teams in Oakland, Giambi beat the Yankees with a two-out homer in the bottom of the ninth of a tied game. That night, Steinbrenner called Cashman and gave him the simple instruction to sign Giambi no matter what the cost. On December 14, 2001, Giambi signed a seven-year, $120-million contract with the Yankees.

  Bob Alejo, the Oakland A’s strength coach, had worked with the A’s for nine years. By the time Giambi signed his new deal with New York, he and Alejo were inseparable. One Oakland official described them as a star with his valet, “Jason holds the drink. Bob holds the cocktail napkin.” The two could always be seen palling around on the road. Nervous about going to New York, Giambi needed Alejo, more than anything else, for companionship. When he was in negotiations with the Yankees, Giambi doubled Alejo’s $85,000 salary to entice him to quit the A’s. Alejo had worked with athletes for nearly twenty years. He trained the great track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee and her brother, Al Joyner. Now, he agreed to become Giambi’s personal trainer, and the Yankees agreed to give him full access to the Yankee facilities.

  Giambi was an enormous man, six-foot-three, 235 pounds, and while he was fanatical about his weightlifting, he was also a slave to fast food. He loved McDonald’s, and the West Coast hamburger chain In-N-Out Burger. Because of his body type and the periodic acne that appeared on his upper back, Giambi could never quite escape the rumors that he was a steroid user. In this he was no different from his best friend Mark McGwire. When Giambi won the American League Most Valuable Player award in 2000, the whispers of steroid use grew louder. Part of the reason was that Giambi’s physical features had changed. His face grew blocky. His body, already large, seemed bigger than ever. His home run totals grew gradually, from 20 in 1997, to 33 in 1999, to 43 in 2000. But at the time Giambi cashed in with the Yankees, few linked him to steroid use, because Barry Bonds had that season hit a record 73 home runs, nearly twice as many as Giambi, whose home run total had actually decreased in 2001, to 38, odd proof in some circles that Giambi was no syringe-created star. Plus, Giambi was always lighthearted, accommodating, and not prone to any of the mood swings that were associated with steroid use.

  To the Crusaders, the amateur sleuthing that was now part of sports was ridiculous. There may have been some players who looked to be obvious steroid users, but to John Hoberman, baseball was at its duplicitous worst. The players and managers complained that players were being unfairly tainted by steroid suspicion, but neither would be committed enough to adopt a steroid-testing policy that would begin to end the suspicion.

  There was something else. Jason Giambi was so enjoyable for the beat writers to cover, so completely unpretentious by star player standards, and so enjoyable to his teammates, coaches, and Oakland employees that no one wanted to think anything bad of him. There were enough horrible people in the game, one Oakland official close to Giambi once said, to hope that nothing bad happened to this guy.

  FOR WHAT seemed like an eternity, Jason Giambi stood with his back to the reporters who camped in front of his locker that day in Chicago. Jeter had spoken. Now Giambi, the new $120-million star, was expected to comment. Giambi did not handle himself particularly well. He knew his name had been linked to steroids during his last couple of years in Oakland, when he had turned into a superstar, but he also knew that as a first-year player with the Yankees, anything he said risked being the story for a given news cycle. Giambi was out of his comfort zone, and the more nervous he appeared, the less confidence the press seemed to ha
ve in him. If Jeter spoke with the coolness and refinement that reflected his New York sensibilities, Giambi resembled a deer caught in headlights. When he finally turned to face the press, Giambi’s eyes darted like a pinball, up, down, left, right. It was an uncomfortable moment. When he made eye contact with the group, it was for a mere flash of a second. He didn’t know about steroid use in the game, he said. He didn’t know why Caminiti would say the awful things he did. Testing of players? Well, that was an issue for the Players Association. He didn’t have any business commenting on that. Then, he blurted out the worst. “I just don’t know anything about this.” Giambi’s discomfort was multiplied across the league.