WITHIN A month of the raid, it was clear that BALCO had the potential to be a time bomb. It was also clear that Barry Bonds was deeply involved. Three months before the raid, he had given an interview to Muscle & Fitness magazine about his ties to BALCO. “I’m just shocked by what they’ve been able to do for me,” he was quoted as saying. “Nobody ever showed it to me in a scientific way before, how important it is to balance your body. I have that knowledge now.”
Yet because of the relationship between beat writers and players in the baseball clubhouse, dealing with an increasingly explosive issue such as anabolic steroids was problematic, to say the least. The result was an odd irony: The reporter closest to the story was the least appropriate person to cover it. To Glenn Schwarz, the last person he could put on the story was Henry Schulman, his Giants beat writer. Schwarz knew the rhythms of the clubhouse because he, unlike many sports editors, had been a baseball beat writer. He covered the Oakland A’s during the championship years of the early 1970s and was quite familiar with how the clubhouse worked. Schulman had covered the Giants for years, first at the Oakland Tribune and then for Schwarz at the Examiner, and had worked hard over that time to achieve a level of sourcing. Covering BALCO would have meant asking questions of Barry Bonds regarding a potentially explosive case. Schulman’s relationship with Bonds was already rocky and that surely would have ended it altogether, not to mention making Schulman a pariah in the clubhouse should the story continue to expand. There had to be another way.
With the luxury of bench strength, as he liked to call it, Schwarz turned to Mark Fainaru-Wada, a general-assignment sports reporter who had been itching to do more investigative work. Fainaru-Wada, Schwarz once said, had investigative reporting in his genes. His brother, Steve Fainaru, was a gifted and versatile reporter for the Washington Post who had covered sports and Latin America and did a reporting tour in Iraq. Steve Fainaru had also been a standout Red Sox beat writer for the Boston Globe. Mark Fainaru-Wada had done good work at the Examiner and later the Chronicle, but had not quite found his niche. He had covered some baseball, filling in periodically to spell the beat writers, and had covered Stanford University football and basketball, but the opportunity to devote his attention to a large-scale investigation such as BALCO was the kind of opportunity he craved.
Fainaru-Wada had already been drifting toward more investigative work. At the time of Dana Yates’s exclusive, he was on loan to the investigative team for a cross-training stint and was deep in the middle of reporting on both campaign finance reform and the recall movement that thrust Arnold Schwarzenegger into the California governorship.
Schwarz and Examiner executive editor Phil Bronstein decided that Fainaru-Wada’s sports background would be helpful on the BALCO story and paired him with veteran investigative reporter Lance Williams. Williams had been a staple of the Examiner’s investigative team for years, had won numerous awards, and was as eager to leap into the BALCO story as Fainaru-Wada. Williams was known as an old-school investigative reporter, friendly and affable, but totally secretive and shrewd. Ricardo Sandoval, a reporter with the Examiner in the late 1980s and early nineties, remembered the office where the Examiner’s investigative team worked. “We used to call it ‘the Bat Cave.’ Lance wasn’t out mingling in the newsroom. He spent most of his time there.”
If it had seemed fairly obvious that the method of investigating a sports story was with seasoned news reporters instead of the more conflicted beat writers, the fact was that the Chronicle was the only paper that employed the tactic, and for more than a single, isolated story. News reporters were not dependent on the whims of the clubhouse. They did not report with the generally deferential style of most sportswriters who were covering subjects who were under no obligation, professionally or morally, to talk to reporters. Coming from outside the baseball fraternity, Fainaru-Wada and Williams would be afforded a level of journalistic freedom that was denied to members of the club. The Chronicle, once maligned for its maddening penchant for mediocrity in such an important city, launched a relentless assault on the BALCO investigation. The result was the kind of long-term investigative reporting that had not been seen on the sports pages for years, if ever.
What was of special advantage to the coverage was Fainaru-Wada’s sports background. “He was the one able to provide the road map,” Glenn Schwarz recalled. Though not completely convinced of the newspaper’s understanding of the unfolding story, much less its commitment, Fainaru-Wada picked up its first score a few days later when the paper reported that two days after the raid, the same group of armed federal agents stormed Greg Anderson’s house. Like a ball of yarn batted around by a kitten, BALCO began to unravel. The FBI search of Anderson’s home uncovered steroids, $60,000 in cash, and a dosage schedule of various supplements for a list of athletes that included Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi. Williams and Fainaru-Wada were now on the story full-time.
As the Chronicle surged, the full scope of the government’s case against BALCO took shape. By mid-October 2003, any confusion about BALCO’s potential as a news story had disappeared, replaced by single-mindedness on the part of the newspaper. Before Game Two of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, John Shea, a reporter with the Chronicle, intercepted Jason Giambi as he headed to the field to confirm what he had learned days earlier. Shea asked Giambi if he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to testify about his involvement with BALCO. Giambi and Shea had known each other from Giambi’s Oakland days, and Shea recalled that even in the frenzy that is the World Series, Giambi was accommodating. Giambi said he had been subpoenaed. He said Barry Bonds had introduced him to Greg Anderson when the two were part of an MLB-sponsored tour of Japan. Shea asked what his connection to BALCO was. Giambi said easily, “Supplements and nutritional stuff.” The next day, Shea recalled, Giambi was surrounded by a hundred reporters. Days later, Bonds and then Gary Sheffield would also be called to testify. Glenn Schwarz was now sure not only of the importance of the story, but that the Chronicle needed to own it.
For more than a year, the Chronicle sketched a disturbing pattern of conduct on the part of Anderson and BALCO, each detail more devastating than the last, revealing the scope of the doping culture in sports. The investigation had begun in 2002, when the federal agents received a tip that BALCO had been distributing illegal steroids to athletes. A year later, an anonymous track coach sent a syringe half-filled with an unidentified fluid to the UCLA Olympic drug lab and identified BALCO founder Victor Conte as its source. Weeks later, Don Catlin, a UCLA scientist and one of the more prominent Crusaders, determined the substance to be tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, a steroid designed to avoid detection in drug tests. For Catlin, the discovery was more proof that a war was taking place between the cheaters and those who wanted a purer competition in sport. THG was not wholly original. Federal prosecutors believed that the roots of the drug were linked to norbolethone, an undetectable steroid that dated back to the 1950s but had never been sold on the market. What was stunning was the sophistication and versatility of the drug and ones like it. THG existed in both balm and liquid form while newer steroids were being produced in spray form as well as the traditional oral form. Conte had developed two potent steroids nicknamed “the clear” and “the cream,” that produced unpredictable side effects.
The BALCO investigation suffocated baseball. On February 12, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a forty-two-count indictment against Victor Conte, Greg Anderson, BALCO vice president James Valente, and track coach Remy Korchemny. To Chuck Yesalis, this was a watershed moment. It wasn’t just that the star power of the athletes involved was blinding, but so, too, was the all-star cast of the law-enforcement officials who handed down the indictments. This case - wasn’t being handled by some junior prosecutor trying to make a name for himself. These were the big boys. Ashcroft had announced the indictments on national television flanked by Mark McClelland and Mark Everson, the commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration and the Inter
nal Revenue Service, respectively. To Yesalis, this was a big deal. “When you saw who was doing the reading of those indictments, you knew the government meant business,” Yesalis recalled. “I remember watching it on TV and saying to myself, ‘Holy shit.’ That John Ashcroft would personally announce those indictments, there was a message being sent. I couldn’t believe it.” Eight days later, in his State of the Union Address, President Bush oddly and forcefully placed the steroid issue on the national conscience when he called on athletes to stop using performance-enhancing drugs and challenged pro leagues to be vigilant in their sports.
The pressure was mounting, but Gary Sheffield was defiant. He had arrived early to Yankee camp in Tampa, and had been working out with his new teammates Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada. John Ashcroft, he said, could test him for steroids any time, any place. On February 22, Barry Bonds offered a similar challenge from the Giants’ facility in Scottsdale, Arizona: “They can test me every day if they choose to.”
The real scrutiny was reserved for Giambi, who faced a New York media still unsure of him. Giambi had arrived in Tampa considerably thinner in the shoulders and face than he had looked in at least five years. He said he had lifted less weight in favor of Pilates, an exercise routine he said gave him more flexibility and less bulk, to ease the strain on his left knee, which had been surgically repaired that offseason. Despite the outward appearance, Giambi said he had only lost four pounds, an assertion that turned the New York writers against him. He was vague about his role in the BALCO investigation. His testimony was sealed, he said, and thus he was not at liberty to talk about it. As the throng of writers and television cameras surrounded him, Giambi was asked if he had taken any performance-enhancing drugs. “Are you talking about steroids?” he said. “Then no, I have never used steroids.”
To some of the writers in the group that day, it was a tough moment. The reporters who liked Giambi immensely wanted to believe him, even if through intuition and experience they knew better. They had feared that with one sentence, Giambi had made a noose for himself that could one day hang him. He had never been malicious, was totally likable, and was one of the easiest superstars to cover. Yet that day in Tampa there was a feeling that Giambi had made a terrible, possibly fatal mistake.
To George King, who covered the Yankees for the New York Post, Giambi had placed himself in an impossible situation. “He couldn’t talk about the case, because who knows what rules he had been instructed with after testifying. And when they asked him if he used steroids, what was he supposed to say? He could have said no, and hoped the grand jury testimony stayed confidential. And he could never have said yes. Basically, he was stuck.”
In March 2004, Fainaru-Wada and Williams reported that Bonds, Giambi, and Gary Sheffield had received steroids from BALCO, and that Romanowski had been a main conduit between BALCO and other football players. Greg Anderson, using his access to the major league clubhouse and ability to trade off of the Barry Bonds name, could raise the BALCO client list in baseball the same way Romanowski could in football.
The particulars began to fold in on one another, each accusation widening the scope of the scandal. The IRS expanded its case, seeking to find the person who had created THG. One BALCO defendant believed it to be Patrick Arnold, an Illinois chemist who had gained acclaim as a proponent of androstenedione, Mark McGwire’s drug of choice. The Chronicle obtained leaked testimony from Tim Montgomery, the fastest man in the world. Montgomery told the grand jury that he had been using human growth hormone supplied by Victor Conte. Montgomery also said that Conte told him that he had given the powerful steroid Winstrol to Barry Bonds. C. J. Hunter, the ex-husband of Marion Jones, said Jones had used human growth hormone. The Chronicle revealed a secretly taped conversation of Greg Anderson explaining that the steroids he distributed to players did not appear in a urine test. Another BALCO defendant, James Valente, said Bonds was a steroid user. Throughout the summer, Bonds was hounded by BALCO.
The Chronicle owned the story the way Glenn Schwarz had hoped, but something else curious happened. No other news entity even came close to competing with the Chronicle, which had since become part of the story as the Justice Department began threatening Williams and Fainaru-Wada to get them to reveal their considerable sourcing. The San Jose Mercury News, the local competition in the Bay Area market now that the Examiner had folded, was largely a nonfactor. The paper employed gifted investigative reporters, such as Peter Carey, who won a Pulitzer Prize with the paper, and Elliot Almond, whom the paper had lured from Seattle but generally failed to use. But despite great resources, the Mercury News lacked the vision, the leadership talent in its sports department, and most important, the deep sourcing of the Chronicle. What gave Schwarz an even greater sense of pride was that with a story of this magnitude even the larger, more influential outlets, such as the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, could not penetrate the Chronicle’s wall of sourcing or expertise. It was the newspaper’s finest hour.
ON THE night of October 27, 2004, sitting in the same seat as six years earlier when McGwire made history, Bud Selig watched the Boston Red Sox win the World Series. The Series itself was something of a yawner. Boston destroyed the listless Cardinals in four games. But it was captivating nonetheless because the haunted and tortured Red Sox finally overcame decades of demons (as well as a healthy amount of front-office mismanagement during the nearly seventy years of the Tom Yawkey dynasty that turned what should have been a powerhouse franchise into an often mediocre one) to win the World Series for the first time since 1918. Not only did the Red Sox avenge close to a century of bizarre and often heartbreaking failure, but in doing so they had humbled the New York Yankees, their greatest tormentors. In the American League Championship Series, the Yankees held a 3-0 lead in games, and eighth-inning leads in Games Four and Five in Boston. The Red Sox won both of those games, then went to Yankee Stadium and humiliated the Yankees in the final two games, never trailing in either. It was a historic comeback, once again the kind of high-quality, high-drama baseball that elevated the sport above its rivals.
To the commissioner, the Red Sox’s winning the World Series was a stupendous moment. He was especially happy for Tom Werner, who after being chased out of San Diego years earlier was now part of the Red Sox ownership group. A championship for Werner had given Selig total vindication. The man who had been driven to tears by the crudity of his fellow owners was now crying again, this time from the joy of holding the World Series trophy. That the Red Sox, Cardinals, and Yankees—which, along with the Los Angeles Dodgers, were the most powerful and influential teams in the history of baseball—were playing baseball deep into October was especially thrilling. No other teams in baseball could boast the kind of tradition those teams had.
After three million fans lined Boston’s streets for the Red Sox’s desperately awaited parade, many holding infants above their heads to record a moment few had believed they’d ever see, Selig reached for another superlative. If baseball was in the throes of a renaissance in 1998, then the 2004 season, he decided, was the single greatest season in the history of the game.
NOT SIX weeks after the Red Sox celebrated their championship, Jason Giambi was hung by his own words. On December 2, 2004, the Chronicle published a story that Giambi had admitted to the grand jury a year earlier that he had consumed a wide and chilling array of performance-enhancing drugs, from illegal anabolic steroids to human growth hormone to undetectable designer steroids created specifically to thwart even the most sophisticated drug tests, even to female fertility pills that boosted the already potent levels of testosterone he had injected into his body. The story was shocking and sobering. Giambi had just suffered through his worst season as a professional, hitting but .208 in a season destroyed by bizarre and frightening physical ailments. Early in the season, Giambi was stricken with a mysterious intestinal parasite he believed he had contracted when the Yankees played their first games of the season in Japan. He was later diagnosed with a benign tumor that,
coupled with the club’s secrecy over its nature and location, became the basis for renewed rumors of steroid use. When the New York Daily News reported that Giambi’s tumor was located in the pituitary gland, a location consistent with steroid use, sympathy for his condition began to turn into cynicism. When he read the news, Rich Melloni was not surprised. “These substances can do things to you that you’d never imagine,” he said. “This is why we talk about this as a health crisis. Yet in this country people make allowances for steroids that they don’t for other drugs. I don’t understand it.”
Except in Boston, the Red Sox championship glow disappeared. The story of 2004 was not the end of baseball’s most legendary curse, but Giambi’s leaked grand jury testimony. In his testimony, Giambi not only detailed how he had injected human growth hormone into his abdomen and anabolic steroids into his buttocks, but also revealed that he had been using for at least three years. That meant that Giambi’s best seasons, when he was one of the most feared hitters in his league and had catapulted himself from an emerging player to one who had found himself on a Hall of Fame track, were now irreversibly tainted. What it really meant was worse. It meant that he had lied directly into the face of America that day in Tampa ten months earlier. After more than a year on the story, destroying the competition in the process, the Chronicle finished with a flourish:
New York Yankees star Jason Giambi told a federal grand jury that he had injected himself with human growth hormone during the 2003 baseball season and had started using steroids at least two years earlier, The Chronicle has learned.
Giambi has publicly denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but his Dec. 11, 2003, testimony in the BALCO steroids case contradicts those statements, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceedings reviewed by The Chronicle.
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