Juicing the Game

by Howard Bryant

  “My reaction, I think, was that of a lot of people. I thought ‘what an idiot,’” he says. “I have a very low tolerance for actors or athletes or movie stars who think that the rules that apply to us, don’t apply to them. Do I feel vindicated by taking the risk? No, because it’s not a competition between these athletes who cheat and the journalists trying to catch them. It’s not a football game where you’re keeping score. It’s sad. It’s sad that they cheat and that they think they can wag their finger in front of Congress and lie. It’s sad that they believe even if they get caught we’ll look the other way because they can hit a baseball. To see Rafael Palmeiro get caught, I didn’t feel sorry for him. I felt sorry for the fans.”

  THE RED Sox are livid. With the Palmeiro announcement, the link between steroid use and its effect on the daily drama of the pennant race is illustrated for the first time. It is no longer a hypothetical situation that can be debated along idealistic fault lines. Now there is a real-time consequence for cheating. As the players and executives are forced to make the connection between steroids and the standings, the libertarian argument that steroid use hurts only the user is exposed as a fallacy.

  Following Palmeiro’s domination of the Red Sox in July, David Wells, now a member of Boston’s starting rotation, angrily defended his former teammate in the press. “This guy works his butt off,” he says. “I played with him. He’s a consummate professional. Anyone who criticizes Rafael Palmeiro can eat a bowl of dick.” Now, the Red Sox argue that the standings are tainted because of Palmeiro’s participation. It would have been one thing had the Orioles won that July series with Palmeiro on the bench, or mildly effective, they reason, but Palmeiro almost single-handedly destroyed Boston.

  The defending champions lack a certain evenness. They are unable to find the proper chemistry to engineer the kind of sustained excellence that led them to a championship a year ago. At the season’s end, the Red Sox will wind up losing the American League East to the Yankees by virtue of a tiebreaker. Both teams finish with 95-67 records, but, with the second-place team in the eastern division guaranteed the wild card, the Yankees take the division by virtue of their 10-9 advantage over Boston in the season series. Had just one of those games in Baltimore gone to the Red Sox, Boston not only would have won the AL East, but would have had home-field advantage in the Division Series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who also finished the season with a 95-67 record. Boston protests, but, understanding that a well-articulated argument that Palmeiro’s presence—and by extension the presence of steroids in the game—undermines the daily credibility of the game would create another political nightmare for the Commissioner’s office, the protest is a muted one. Two weeks after his initial comments, Wells again speaks about Palmeiro. “Raffy,” he says, “Raffy let us all down.”

  NOT LONG after Palmeiro’s suspension, Tom Davis, the chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, announces that he will investigate whether Palmeiro perjured himself during the March 17 hearings. The results of his investigation, made public on November 10, provide more damning evidence of the scope of drug use within baseball.

  According to Davis’s report, Palmeiro was ordered by Major League Baseball to provide a urine sample under the league’s steroid-testing program on May 4, 2005, just before the Orioles’s 5-1 win over the Blue Jays in Baltimore. Before a game on approximately May 19, Palmeiro received a telephone call from Gene Orza informing him that he had tested positive for the steroid stanozolol. Palmeiro was then allowed an arbitration hearing that took place nearly a month later on June 16. During the hearing, Palmeiro testified that he had “no idea” how his test could have come back positive. He then told the panel that, in mid-April, less than a month before his test, Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada had given him a syringe and vial of liquid B12 vitamin, the same substance for which Tejada had been detained by Oakland airport security in 2002, the year he was named American League MVP as a member of the Athletics. Palmeiro told the arbitration panel that he did not believe that the B12 Tejada had given him was responsible for his positive test.

  In the process of investigating Palmeiro, the committee uncovers disturbing facts about Tejada. During its interviews, the committee learns that Tejada had not only given B12 to Palmeiro, but to two other teammates on the Orioles as well. When interviewed by the committee, Tejada accurately maintains that B12 is not a steroid, but ignores the fact that it is nonetheless illegal to obtain in the United States without a prescription. Tejada testifies that he has been receiving B12 injections since he was five years old and that they were first administered by his father. Tejada also reveals that he has been receiving shipments of B12 and syringes from the Dominican Republic since his rookie year with the A’s in 1997. While still with Oakland, Tejada had asked the A’s to provide him with B12, but was routinely denied by the Oakland physicians on the basis that he did not suffer from a vitamin deficiency. The medical staffs of both the A’s and Orioles also refused to administer B12 shots to players, so Tejada regularly allowed fellow players to inject him. A player identified in the report only as “Player A” testifies to the committee that during the 2004 season he had given Tejada “forty to forty-five” B12 injections and that during 2005 the number of injections he provided Tejada was closer to “thirty to thirty-five.” The committee, focused on the details of a potential perjury case against Palmeiro, does not appear to question Tejada about how he obtained large quantities of B12 without a prescription, or the fact that he routinely travels with syringes.

  Palmeiro, testifying in Washington before an Oriole home game against the Angels on August 25, describes his relationship with Tejada as “close.” He tells the Congressional committee that Tejada was “like a brother” to him and that when his suspension was first announced, Tejada was one of the first people to contact him with supportive words. Palmeiro refers to Tejada as a “really good, genuine guy.” When Palmeiro returned to the Orioles following his ten-day suspension, he testifies, Tejada hugged him and “received me better than anyone else. He embraced me and it seemed like, in public, he was really being, you know, one of the supportive guys.” Tejada testifies that he offered Palmeiro a vile of B12 because he thought his teammate looked “tired and run-down.” Although the B12’s ability to provide increased energy is an assertion routinely rejected by Major League and Players Association medical experts, Palmeiro says that he accepted the B12 vial and a syringe from Tejada because he was indeed searching for an engery boost. He adds that it did not strike him as unusual to accept the vitamin because, when he played for the Texas Rangers, he used to receive several B12 injections from the team’s physician over the course of a season.

  Inexplicably, Palmeiro contradicts his June arbitration testimony and proceeds to tell congressional investigators that he now believes that the shot Tejada gave him contained stanozolol, however inadvertently. The transcript of a June 13 polygraph test conducted in connection with his arbitration proceedings confirms Palmeiro’s belief that it was Tejada who gave him steroids. When asked in the transcript, “Did you unknowingly receive a B12 supplement that contained a steroid?” Palmeiro responds affirmatively. Palemeiro elaborates on this belief in his testimony to the congressional committee: Q: You believe it was the B12?

  A: I believe it was, but I wish I could prove it.

  Q: How in your mind do you think this was contaminated? What do you think? Do you think it was inadvertently not B12 but a steroid?

  A: No, I’m not sure. I don’t know how to answer that, because obviously I didn’t take the proper steps to look into it, but when I got it, I feel sure that it was B12. And I’m not saying that that’s not what it was. I’m just saying that could have been what got me contaminated. I can’t say for sure that is what it was, but that is the thing I can pinpoint to that is different than anything else that I have done in the past.

  Q: [W]hat you are saying here is that you believe, your best guess is that your positive test was as a result of that B12 shot
?

  A: That is my guess.

  The instructions on the vial Palmeiro received from Tejada were in Spanish. Having previously been refused by the Orioles medical staff when asking them to inject him with B12, Palmeiro took the vial home and asked his wife Lynn to inject him. According to the report, “Mrs. Palmeiro had no medical training and had never administered a shot to another person, but she frequently injected their two dogs with medication.” Lynn Palmeiro also testifies before the committee that afternoon. That night, Palmeiro goes hitless as the Orioles defeat the Angels 2-0.

  Palmeiro’s reputation is destroyed by these revelations, but they also represent a colossal embarrassment for baseball and its testing policy. By the time of the Palmieiro announcement, six other players, including Minnesota relief pitcher Juan Rincon and Devil Rays outfielder Alex Sanchez, have been suspended for positive tests, but none are afforded the type of lengthy appeal process given Palmeiro. That Palmeiro was informed of his positive test on May 19, but did not begin serving his suspension until August 1, deepens the conviction among players that, where the testing policy is concerned, the game and its union are willing to sacrifice the lesser-known players to protect the stars.

  Perhaps even more damning for baseball is Palmeiro’s testimony that he took his May 4 drug test unsupervised and was given from the time he arrived at the ballpark until one hour after game time to provide a urine sample, a span of nearly eight hours. Allowing players such a large window—in which it would be possible to cheat the test either by substituting the urine sample or using urine-cleansing agents—is a loophole Bud Selig, Rob Manfred, and Donald Fehr personally promised Congress in March 2005 they would close. Instead, Palmeiro’s testimony leaves baseball vulnerable to the charge that its players are given ample opportunity to circumvent the league’s drug policy.

  In the end, Palmeiro serves his suspension, but he will never again be the same player, either on the field or in the minds of those that watched him play. He returns to the Orioles on August 11 but does not play for three days. During his suspension, the Orioles announce that Rafael Palmeiro Day, a celebration of Palmeiro’s 3,000th hit and Hall of Fame career originally scheduled for August 14, has been canceled. Instead, Palmeiro finally returns to the line-up that day and goes 0 for 4 as the Orioles lose 7-6 to Toronto. In first place in the AL East with a 26-13 record when Palmeiro was first informed of his positive test, the Orioles have gone 31-47 since, dropping out of the race. On August 4, the same day Palmeiro’s celebration is canceled, Peter Angelos fires Mazzilli. Palmeiro hits just .077 in August, mustering a mere two hits in twenty-six at-bats with no home runs and a single RBI, and goes hitless in his final eighteen at-bats as Baltimore loses ten of its final twelve games of the month. The season is horribly lost. Palmeiro is ridiculed as passionately as he was celebrated the previous month. Desperate to escape the booing, he wears earplugs during a 7-2 loss to the Blue Jays in Toronto on August 30 and goes hitless with two strikeouts in four at-bats. He does not play another game for the Orioles.

  Days later, the fact that Palmeiro told Davis’s committee that it was Tejada who likely gave him the stanozolol that was later detected in his bloodstream is leaked to the press. Palmeiro implicating Tejada infuriates the Orioles organization, which has invested $72 million over six years in the shortstop. The team sends Palmeiro home for the final weeks of the season. On November 10, Davis’s report is made public. Though the committee concludes it does not have sufficient evidence to prosecute Palmeiro for perjury, the news does nothing to save his career. Days later, the Orioles announce that neither Palmeiro nor Sammy Sosa, whose injury-plagued season came to an end just five days before Palmeiro’s final game, will return to the team in 2006.

  THE SPOTLIGHT eventually fades. The television cameras and news crews move on to the next topic of the day, to political scandals and hurricanes, leaving the heavy lifting of steroid education and research to the Crusaders. Rich Melloni sits in his office hoping that a month of misery for baseball will provide greater interest in the topic. He hates himself for it, but Melloni is not naïve. He knows the culture of celebrity all too well and, like it or not, the important work he does in examining the effects of steroids on the adolescent brain receives attention only when Rafael Palmeiro or Barry Bonds makes news. In early June he is a speaker at a Northeastern University seminar on performance-enhancing drugs. On a panel with him is Stephen Lynch, the South Boston Democrat who serves on the House Committee on Government Reform. Melloni watched the hearings and was impressed by Lynch, both his determination in dealing with the powerful Don Fehr and Bud Selig but also his refusal to allow Jose Canseco to get away with his own reversals. As the seminar concluded, Melloni approached Lynch, hoping the congressman would lend his muscle to the fight.

  “He didn’t give me the time of day. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care without the cameras,” Melloni said. “The whole thing was a photo op. It cannot tell you how disappointed I was. The bottom line, and you can tell by our level of federal funding and by episodes like these, is that this issue just isn’t considered important enough. Welcome to my world.”

  Never particularly energized about the issue, the writers, with only a few exceptions, largely dismiss the larger consequences that come with the steroid era. It is too big, too murky, and too inevitable that hard choices have to be made, to confront. Two examples illustrate the timidity of the baseball press. The first comes from the Boston Globe. The paper owns sufficient credentials attesting to its toughness. It was the first major daily to call for the immediate pullout of troops in Vietnam, and won Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of both the busing crisis in the mid- 1970s and the Catholic priest scandal in the late 1990s, but it could not have been more weak-kneed on steroids.

  In a piece by the Globe’s Gordon Edes, a writer consistently sympathetic to Bud Selig’s point of view, Bill Morgan, the Red Sox physician for twenty years, says that he had no idea steroids were ever a part of the Red Sox clubhouse. He is allowed to speak in a great newspaper without question, without balance, without filter. Morgan, and by extension the Globe’s readers, is not reminded that he was the Red Sox team doctor when both Canseco and Jeremy Giambi were members of the Red Sox, when steroids were found in the car of Red Sox shortstop Manny Alexander, and when Mo Vaughn freely admitted using an oral form of human growth hormone. The words of Chuck Yesalis Sr. echoed, “Steroids are only used by the other guy, the other team.”

  The second example of the press’s timidity comes from Jayson Stark of the network giant ESPN. His is more an abject surrender to the topic when he concludes in the wake of Palmeiro’s suspension that the first baseman still belongs in the Hall of Fame. “Why?” Stark writes. “Because I’m not a cop.” Stark says this even though his Hall of Fame vote is the ultimate police power for baseball immortality.

  DONALD HOOTON, however, does not wave a white flag. He is in good spirits, bolstered by the notion that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. He has Bud Selig’s attention, as well as that of key members of the NFL. He believes in Selig’s epiphany and, like Rich Melloni, understands that the star power of the professional sports leagues is a powerful tool. His energy cannot wane. His son Taylor has been gone almost three years.

  “Do I have hope? Absolutely. I have hope we’ll make an impact,” he says. “I couldn’t live with myself I had just let Taylor die. We’re going to dedicate the rest of our lives to this. But am I optimistic? No. We’re going to carry our crusade forward and, as I travel around the country, it is clear we have a lot of work to do. The parents don’t want to listen, even the ones who know it’s a problem. When Taylor died, we knew as a fact, that seven of fifteen players on his baseball team were juicing. Think about this. He has a coach who told him, a baby, a six-four, 180-pound sixteen-year-old, that he needs to get bigger. To me, that borders on negligence. If you think dealing with baseball is tough, the local coaches are similar. I say to the coaches, ‘I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. I’m going to be
your worst nightmare.’”

  FOR MOST of the season, the Chicago White Sox have had a convincing lead in the American League Central, but the scouts, executives, writers, and most players do not believe in them. Former White Sox closer Keith Foulke, whose championship aura from 2004 has dissolved in a torrent of divorce and injuries that have left him with an eighty-four-mile per hour fastball and few friends on his own team, is among them. “It’s one thing to play against the Central, and rack up a good record there,” he says one May afternoon at Fenway Park. “It’s a lot different to play against the East.” Across Red Sox clubhouse is Kevin Millar, the team’s gregarious spokesman. “Wait until they play the Sox and Yankees,” he said. “Then, we’ll see.” An American League scout who follows the White Sox extensively is also a nonbeliever. “You look at them and you see the 2001 Mariners,” he says, referring to the Seattle club that won a record 116 games yet failed to advance to the World Series.

  There is a thin irony that during the year in which baseball is seeking redemption from its greatest scandal since the 1919 Black Sox, it is the White Sox themselves who headline the season. The White Sox, who last won a championship in 1917, are the great story in baseball as the Red Sox were a year before, but the specter of steroids hovers over the pennant races.