Juicing the Game

by Howard Bryant

  Still, the Crusaders and most newspaper columnists hammered away at the feebleness of baseball’s policy. Gary Wadler challenged baseball’s leadership. The policy wasn’t enough, he said. Testing is only the first step. The next is to know what substances the players are taking. In other words, every positive drug test isn’t identical. He offered to analyze baseball’s findings. Wadler recalled making an earnest pitch to the commissioner’s office. He did not want the names of the players who tested positive, but believed it to further segment the data. Wadler offered to categorize the different forms of drugs the players had tested positive for, the reason being baseball would then be able to determine the severity of its steroid problem. For example, baseball would then know what percentage of its players were using the hardcore steroids, such as Winstrol and Deca-durabolin, against the percentage whose steroid intake came from less potent sources, such as androstenedione and other supplements. Baseball did not respond to Wadler’s offer. A bitterness grew between baseball and the antidoping forces. Manfred did not want Wadler’s help; the sport had its own experts to screen the tests. Wadler took this as another example of baseball’s being more interested in controlling what the public knew instead of being forthright. A standoff had emerged.

  “I was even more disturbed,” Wadler said. “I told them I don’t want to know the names of the players. I want to know the nature of the problem. Tell me the kind of steroids you found in the urine. To this day, it would seem to me that baseball would want to be able to say it wasn’t a hardcore steroid problem, but a supplement problem. Because they aren’t even releasing that information, it leads me to believe the game has a problem with hardcore stuff. I’m not asking for anyone’s name. That - doesn’t break anyone’s confidentiality. It even gave them a way out, if their problem was more supplement-based than steroid-based.”

  For Rob Manfred, the ultimate agreement was a disappointment in comparison to the program he wanted in place, but anyone expecting a form of baseball McCarthyism was uninformed. “The goal isn’t to catch - people,” he said. “The goal is to keep them from doing it.”

  ON FEBRUARY 17, 2003, just days after pitchers and catchers reported to spring training, Steve Bechler, a young pitching prospect for the Baltimore Orioles, collapsed from heat exhaustion during workouts in Fort Lauderdale. Bechler, who was twenty-five years old, died soon after. Bechler had used ephedra, the controversial supplement that had been linked by the Food and Drug Administration to at least one hundred heart-related deaths and yet was very popular in major league clubhouses. Eighteen months earlier, when Minnesota Vikings tackle Korey Stringer died during training camp, traces of ephedra were found in his system. After Stringer’s death, the NFL acted immediately, banning the use of all ephedra-based products. In baseball, Orioles owner Peter Angelos called for an ephedra ban, which was seconded by Bud Selig. Don Fehr, however, was vague. He felt more study needed to be done. A tough leader, Fehr stood his ground against both the rising tide of dissatisfaction and the whispering campaign that the union was the obstructionist when it came to confronting pressing drug concerns.

  In the wake of the tragedy, Don Fehr and Bud Selig again wound up in front of Congress. Baseball again had to answer why ephedra was legal in its sport when it was banned by the NFL, the NCAA, and the International Olympic Committee. The simple answer was that the union balked at banning ephedra because, like androstenedione, it was legal, easily obtainable in any nutrition store. What they didn’t say was that ephedra, ostensibly a weight-loss dietary supplement, had long been used in baseball also as an amphetamine, and amphetamines were baseball’s open secret. Amphetamines had not been included in the 2002 drug-testing policy, even though - everyone in baseball knew that far more players used Greenies than used steroids. To Marvin Miller, Bud Selig’s demand that the union ban ephedra was more hypocrisy from the baseball leadership. “In most locker rooms, most clubhouses, amphetamines—red ones, green ones, etc.—were lying out there in the open, in a bowl, as if they were jellybeans,” Miller recalled. “They were not put there by the players, so of course there was no pressure to test. They were being distributed by ownership.”

  During the final hours of negotiations in 2002, when baseball seemed ready to allow the players to strike had they refused to sign an agreement that contained a drug-testing program, amphetamines were omitted from the final drafts. Ownership blamed the union. Gene Orza said ownership never asked for an ephedra ban because it was not a steroid. At a famous joint briefing, some players asked Orza why amphetamines were not part of the policy. Three physicians at the meeting confirmed Orza’s reply in a New York Times story. “In every labor agreement, there are dark corners,” Orza was said to have said. “And I would suggest this is a dark corner you shouldn’t look into.”

  Despite the warnings of the medical community, there was not a consensus, even among the trainers and strength coaches in baseball, that ephedra was really all that bad. If anything, some believed the football - people panicked, that banning ephedra was a public relations move in the wake of Stringer’s death. The truth was that many players and trainers in baseball still used it. The key with ephedra was that it had to be taken in an extremely controlled environment, “on the bottle,” in pharmacy parlance. That meant its dosage and regimen had to be strictly followed. Though it was unpopular at the time, and clearly insensitive in the aftermath of both Stringer’s and Bechler’s deaths, those in the medical community who did not believe that ephedra posed a significant health threat were convinced that the supplement was most likely abused, as was the case when it was used as an amphetamine, or taken after a night of drinking, or when a player was likely dehydrated. Advocacy groups, such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a Washigton, D.C.-based trade organization, believed that the people who tended to have problems with ephedra were likely using it in a way that made it lethal. To the opposition, that ephedra was so dangerous if not taken exactly as prescribed was precisely the reason why the government had sought its ban. The forces that demanded ephedra be banned were convinced that few consumers took even the most basic medicine in the precise proper dosage.

  Weeks after, when the shock of Bechler’s death began to fade, players freely admitted they would continue using ephedra. If it was so dangerous, went the reasoning, it wouldn’t be legal. The story receded, and it was baseball as usual.

  THE 2003 season was brilliant, particularly the playoffs. The prospect of a Cubs-Red Sox World Series match, which would have pitted the two most celebrated championship droughts in the sport against each other, came so tantalizingly close to happening that baseball, for the first time in years, even outshone football, easily considered the nation’s most popular sport. October’s brilliance reaffirmed that played at its best, no other sport could grip America as baseball could.

  The Red Sox escaped elimination three times to stun the Oakland A’s in a thrilling Division Series. They then found themselves five outs from defeating the hated Yankees in Game Seven of the American League Championship Series before a now-legendary collapse was capped off by a game-winning home run by struggling Yankee third baseman Aaron Boone in the bottom of the eleventh inning.

  Before the All-Star break, the Florida Marlins, one of baseball’s stepchildren, fired their manager, Jeff Torborg, and replaced him with seventy-three-year-old Jack McKeon. They then posted the best record in baseball over the remainder of the season. Displaying an uncommon determination in the playoffs, the Marlins first upset San Francisco and Barry Bonds, now undeniably the game’s greatest hitter. They then came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to break the hearts of the long-suffering Chicago Cubs. Like the Red Sox, the Cubs were five outs away from the World Series, which would have been their first since 1945, when a longtime Cubs fan reached out and knocked what appeared to be a sure out away from Chicago left-fielder Moises Alou’s outstretched glove. What followed was an eight-run Florida rally that would effectively even the series, crushing the Cubs’ spirits and their World
Series hopes. The Marlins would go on to celebrate a World Series title on the hallowed Yankee Stadium field. It was just the second winning season in the Marlins’ ten-year history, but both, the other being 1997, had ended in World Championships.

  ON A sunny, noticeably cold morning in late October, Bud Selig was sitting in his office in Milwaukee when he received a phone call. He recognized the voice immediately. High-pitched and hurried, the sound of George Steinbrenner was unmistakable.

  Selig was happy to hear from Steinbrenner. The two had had a somewhat combative relationship over their three decades in baseball together. Selig got things done through the muscle of consensus, Steinbrenner through the tornado force of personality and power. Steinbrenner and his millions were anathema to Selig’s small-market ethos, while Steinbrenner remained convinced that small-market teams such as Selig’s Brewers needed to stop complaining and run their businesses better. Selig’s desire to share revenue was in many ways an attempt to bring the Yankees down from their exalted financial perch. But Selig, in daily practice, had made major concessions to the game’s powerhouse franchises. Once, the commissioner’s office discouraged large cash transactions between teams to complete trades, for it gave the big-money teams a huge advantage to acquire talented players from cash-poor teams. In the mid-seventies, Bowie Kuhn famously blocked Oakland’s Charlie Finley from sending Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and Joe Rudi to Boston in a trade that would have required Boston to send $1.75 million to the money-hemorrhaging Finley. Finley was actually decades ahead of his time, because now Selig allowed the big clubs to use their muscle, routinely approving millions to change hands. When Alex Rodriguez was traded from Texas to the Yankees following the 2003 season, Selig allowed the Rangers to absorb $67 million of the $179 million that comprised Rodriguez’s remaining salary. In later years, Selig would allow the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, and Diamondbacks to each complete trades that included more than $1 million in cash transactions. To executives in the smaller markets, it was another example of the Selig strategy: There were two sets of rules, one for the league, and another for the signature franchises.

  Still, the World Series had ended just days earlier and, to Selig’s surprise, Steinbrenner did not betray any bitterness about losing the ultimate baseball prize. Instead, he sounded almost statesmanlike.

  “Bud, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but as commissioner of our game you should be proud of baseball, and of these playoffs,” Steinbrenner said. “From start to finish, even though my team did not win, these playoffs were the most exciting and remarkable I can remember.” The two men chatted, and Steinbrenner ended the conversation with a sentence that Selig was singularly pleased to hear.

  “I hope,” Steinbrenner closed, “that you take pleasure in this victory for baseball.”

  Steinbrenner’s call may have been the most prominent, and because of their prickly history, it may have meant the most to the commissioner, but during the final week of October, Steinbrenner was merely one of the many to offer ceremonious calls to the commissioner’s office. George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, applauded Selig on a wonderful year. Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder and manager of the Montreal Expos, phoned to tell Selig that baseball was back. Joe Morgan did the same. The commissioner’s old friend George Will gave Selig a big pat on the back. The most poignant call came from Rachel Robinson, the widow of the legendary pioneer Jackie Robinson. As he always did, Selig told Rachel that Robinson’s courage in integrating baseball in 1947 was, and would always be, the single most important event in the history of baseball.

  The calls were not mere platitudes. It had been a month of engrossing baseball played at its highest level. “Incredible,” Selig said to Steinbrenner, “is the only way I could describe what we saw this year.”

  Two weeks after receiving his triumphant phone call from Steinbrenner, Bud Selig received another, less celebratory call, this one from Rob Manfred. The news was not good. In fact, it was potentially devastating. Manfred told Selig that at least 5 to 7 percent of the game’s twelve hundred players were using steroids. That meant that, on average, at least two players on every team had flunked a drug test. It also meant that in 2004, players would be penalized for a positive test. Selig thanked Manfred for the information and, grimly, hung up the telephone.

  When he heard the numbers, Gary Wadler was upset. At the very least, the sport had to finally admit it was no different from the rest. It had been caught up in a drug culture that for years it refused to believe existed. When he read the interpretation of the numbers in the press, however, he grew furious. The papers focused on how baseball’s problems were clearly overstated by Ken Caminiti, who estimated that half the players were using steroids, and Jose Canseco, who believed that 85 percent were. Five to 7 percent was hardly a cause for alarm, went the commentary. Wadler knew that 5 to 7 percent of twelve hundred players meant that sixty players at the very least, and possibly as many as eighty-four, had been caught using steroids. Not only that, thought Wadler, but those numbers did not include players who were using more sophisticated substances that were undetectable with ordinary testing, nor did they account for the fact that beating the test was so easy.

  Similarly, Wadler noted that 4 percent of high-school upperclassmen had used steroids. Four percent sounded good; it meant that 96 percent of the students weren’t using, but it translated to three hundred thousand steroid-using students in the United States, or the entire populations of cities as large as Miami or Oakland. Baseball’s eighty-four players was a significant number, Wadler thought, enough to fill the major league rosters of more than three teams, and yet to the press it seemed just the opposite. The press downplayed the figures, as if the percentage was low enough not to pose a problem for the game. For Wadler, it wasn’t just lazy reporting, but another example of how powerful the baseball establishment truly was. Even the reporters whose responsibility it was to provide a check on the industry weren’t yet willing to confront the drug question.

  “I was outraged, and I’ll tell you why I was outraged,” Wadler recalled.

  “The percentages can be very deceiving. That was akin to saying the entire New York Yankees and Mets all were on steroids for us first to say we have a problem. Imagine saying two entire baseball teams all have to be on steroids for us to say we have a problem. You say only 5 to 7 percent, that’s not that bad. Incidentally, 4 percent of high-school juniors and seniors use anabolic steroids. Is that a problem? You’re damned right that’s a problem. Five to 7 percent of baseball players, is that a problem? You’re damned right that’s a problem.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  To Reggie Jackson, baseball in 2002 looked more like a card house than a fortress. He was sure that during Bud Selig’s renaissance the game had been terribly damaged. Baseball had ridden the home run wave without being particularly concerned about the forces it had unintentionally unleashed. There had been warning signs, but the collective leadership of the sport ran right though them like Pete Rose careening past his third-base coach. Now, the bill for 1998 had come due. The questions that - weren’t being asked when Sosa and McGwire captured the nation would not go away. The witch hunt was on, but it did not rest with the questions of which players were using steroids and which were not. Everyone was under suspicion, and the more home runs that were hit, the more anecdotal proof existed that during the decade something had gone horribly wrong. Culpability was at issue now, for the game had shifted so dramatically, so completely that the question wasn’t just about the explosive numbers being posted by the players, but who was really responsible for the game’s current state and why.

  Sandy Alderson may not have been sure about the degree to which steroids had contributed to the offensive explosion of the 1990s, but he knew that the game, perception-wise, was now cornered. If the players were at fault for using these dangerous substances at the expense of their own and the game’s reputation, then so, too, was the game’s leadership at fault for not being aggr
essive enough in understanding the problem and working to stop it.

  Alderson seemed to sit in one of the more uncomfortable positions in baseball. He was the man who knew too much. Unlike Don Fehr, who did not seem to be wholly convinced that steroid use posed a problem in baseball, Alderson knew for a fact that steroids were a problem, and had no illusions to the contrary. Alderson attended the key Milwaukee meeting in the winter of 2000 when the medical staffs of half the clubs told Bud Selig that steroids were the biggest problem each team faced. Even if he couldn’t be exactly sure, he knew steroids were a problem with Jose Canseco and had reservations about Mark McGwire when he was the A’s general manager. In this sense, he was no different from a host of other executives in the game. There were entire clubs that were considered “steroid teams.” The Philadelphia Phillies of the early 1990s with Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulton, Pete Incaviglia, and Dave Hollins were always suspect. So were the Ken Caminiti Padres, and the originals, the Tony LaRussa A’s. Scouts consistently were suspicious of the 2002 Anaheim Angels’ bullpen. “Those guys, guys like Brendan Donnelly and Ben Weber, had never done anything in their careers,” said one American League scout. “And all of a sudden they were throwing gas.” There was a memorable moment in the Oakland coaches’ room when various members of the A’s, including general manager Billy Beane, were talking about steroid use, especially the common suspicion that superstar Jason Giambi had been a steroid user. Ron Washington, the third-base coach, professed naïveté, and remembered being ridiculed by his colleagues. “I swear to you, I never thought about it. I just thought guys went about their work and busted their asses,” he recalled. “And other guys looked at me and said, ‘Come on, Wash!’ I guess I was the most naïve son of a bitch around.”