Category Archives: Drugs in baseball

Postscript on my failed attempt to interview Bernie Carbo

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I had my first “Where Are They Now” piece published last night on Baseball Savvy, a site I was recently invited to contribute to. I interviewed Billy O’Dell, who pitched for the Giants in the 1962 World Series, and our two cordial phone conversations contrasted with the run-in I had a few weeks before with another player I approached about this, Bernie Carbo.

As I wrote about here before, I had a chance to interview Carbo that didn’t go anywhere. I’ll rehash over the next few paragraphs for anyone who missed my first entry (anyone who’s read it can skip down to the last four graphs.) Basically, Carbo hit a famous home run in the 1975 World Series and more recently has been in the news for telling the Boston Globe, “I played every game high.” I was put in touch with Carbo through a mutual contact Dave McCarthy, executive director of the Ted Williams Museum in Florida, and Carbo and I set up to talk, but it didn’t come off.

When I called Carbo at the time we’d agreed on, he seemed to get spooked when I asked if I could use a recorder, a standard question. For reference, I asked O’Dell that same question both times I talked to him, and he had no problem with it. Maybe Carbo’s more on guard given recent spotlight.

Whatever the case, Carbo had some questions for me, including how I knew McCarthy. I explained how I had been doing research for a post here about how the Hitters Hall of Fame at the Ted Williams Museum honored players like Fred McGriff and Dale Murphy, but not Jackie Robinson and Honus Wagner and that I called McCarthy and we struck up an acquaintance. My mistake with Carbo was that I spoke of the Hitters Hall of Fame as a second-rate Hall of Fame, though it didn’t seem like a deal-killer at the time for the purposes of our interview.

Carbo told me he had interviews slated to go a few weeks out with ESPN and the 700 Club, that he promised those outlets he wouldn’t give his story out ahead of time, and that he would need to call me back in mid-May.

He gave a radio interview to a Red Sox talk show two days after we spoke. Upon hearing this, I called Carbo fuming. I know better than to make these calls, and it went about as well as could be expected. Before our conversation devolved into us talking heatedly over one another and him hanging up on me, Carbo said he had initially agreed to our interview thinking I was a friend of McCarthy and that he began to distrust me or what I would write after I told him the stuff above about how I knew McCarthy.

I’m neither a friend nor a foe, I’m a writer– and for the record, McCarthy’s been nothing but nice to me. But Carbo’s words wouldn’t have struck a nerve if there hadn’t been some truth to them.

The truth is, I’ve felt bad since I first wrote about the Hitters Hall of Fame six months ago. Ted Williams is one of my all-time favorite players, and McCarthy said the museum gives $80,000 to $100,000 to children every year. That’s a good thing, even if it’s not for me as a writer to take a position one way or another. I also like the idea of extra Halls of Fame in baseball besides Cooperstown, which doesn’t honor nearly enough players. A Hitters Hall of Fame is a neat concept for a museum, particularly if it was the brainchild of Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter ever.

Most times, talking to a ballplayer is a wonderful experience. Since the ill-fated non-interview with Carbo, I’ve talked to O’Dell and a former Pacific Coast League catcher Billy Raimondi (for the book I’m working on about his former teammate Joe Marty), and I couldn’t have asked for two nicer interview subjects. With that said, I came in with a good reminder about the importance of choosing my words carefully around ballplayers.

My attempt to interview Bernie Carbo today

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As faithful readers will know, I have been offered a chance to contribute to a Where Are They Now section on a Web site called Baseball Savvy. The section is made up of features catching up with former ballplayers, not Hall of Famers necessarily, but the Vida Blues and Bill Madlocks of the sport. I have been looking for a good first player to profile, and today, I almost interviewed Bernie Carbo. In fact, I spoke to him twice.

Fans may remember Carbo as the Boston Red Sox outfielder who hit a game-tying, three-run homer against the Cincinnati Reds in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, paving the way for Carlton Fisk to hit a walk-off shot in the bottom of the 12th. It’s arguably the greatest baseball game ever (it gets my vote), and the home run gave Carbo his fifteen minutes of fame. Rather improbably, he now seems to be having a second fifteen minutes, albeit for different reasons. On April 1, the Boston Globe published a story where Carbo said, “I played every game high.”

In the article, Carbo detailed addictions to cocaine, marijuana and other drugs during his career and after, saying he’s been clean for fifteen years and that he now runs an evangelical Christian ministry. Needless to say, his words went viral, though I didn’t think to seek him out in my search for a suitable interview subject.

Instead, I put in a call this afternoon to Dave McCarthy, executive director of Ted Williams Museum, a past subject here, hoping he could pass my number on to Will Clark, who was inducted into the museum’s Hitters Hall of Fame in February. McCarthy declined, saying he enjoys good relationships with players because he doesn’t pester them. I said I understood and asked as a throwaway question if McCarthy knew of any good players for me to talk to. To my surprise, he threw out Carbo’s name and said he could get him for me. He said he needed Carbo’s okay and asked me to call back in an hour. When I did that, McCarthy gave me Carbo’s cell phone number.

I was given the number with the understanding Carbo wouldn’t be available to talk straightaway and that I could arrange to interview him at another time. I called and got a voice mail which offered two other numbers for Carbo. When those numbers led to voice mails as well, I called the cell again, intending to leave a message. This time, however, Carbo picked up. We spoke briefly and agreed to talk at 7 this evening.

I got permission to leave work a couple hours early and went home to read the Globe story, do some research and prepare questions. By 7, I had a couple of pages of questions prepared (such as: How did you manage a .387 career on-base percentage under the influence?) but the interview didn’t come off.

I called at the appointed time, Carbo picked up, and we exchanged pleasantries. Carbo seemed to get spooked, though, when I asked if I could use a recorder, a question I typically ask interview subjects. Carbo wanted to know who I was, what I was doing this for, and how I knew McCarthy, so I spelled it out. He wanted to know what I would be asking about, so I gave him an idea of my questions. Carbo then said ESPN and the 700 Club will be airing interviews of him in the next few weeks. In fact, he said he shot three hours of footage with ESPN today. He also told me he assured these outlets he wouldn’t give the story out ahead of time. He also said something to effect that he still wasn’t sure how this story was going to play out with the public.

Thus, Carbo asked for my name and number and said he would call me in mid-May. I fear either Carbo will get an adverse reaction to one of the big interviews or that the story will have been beaten to death by the time we talk. Still, he seems nice enough to not write off entirely. Upon hearing my last name, Carbo asked if I was related to a man he went to high school with; when I mentioned the Hitters Hall of Fame, he asked if Shoeless Joe was a member.

(Postscript: Actually, he didn’t want to talk to me.)

Didn’t anybody read Vindicated?

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It’s all over the Internet that Jose Canseco got subpoenaed on Tuesday to testify before a grand jury on April 8 about Roger Clemens. Canseco played on three different teams with the embattled former pitcher, currently under federal investigation for lying to Congress in 2008 when he said he never used performance enhancing drugs. For all the news stories on what went down this week, there’s been scant mention of excerpts from Canseco’s book, Vindicated, that lend perspective.

I’ll backtrack for a moment.  Sometime in the last few months, I wanted some quick, easy reading, so I picked up what had heretofore been occasional bathroom fare. Surprisingly, Vindicated hasn’t been too bad. Just as Canseco’s previous book, Juiced might be this generation’s equivalent of Ball Four for revealing unflattering secrets about baseball and actually helping the game in the process, Vindicated reads a little like the follow-up to that bestseller, I’m Glad You Didn’t Take it Seriously: self-congratulatory and a little redundant, but also entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking.

Much of the early going in Vindicated centers around Clemens. Canseco writes that Clemens was “effectively excised from my book” but that when they played together, “Roger might say, ‘I think I need a B-twelve shot right about now,’” code for steroids.  Canseco adds that though he gave his opinions on Clemens to Pedro Gomez of ESPN and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, they weren’t aired, and he even speculates that George W. Bush or his father, both friends of Clemens, “made some calls and took care of things for good ole Roger.” That sounds a little ego-manic and hair-brained.

Later on, we get to something more sober and compelling that could be a preview of what’s to come on April 8.  I am bookmarked at page 108, but I scanned the remainder of the book this evening and came across a passage about Canseco’s trip to Houston in 2008 to sign an affidavit that stated he had “no reason to believe” Clemens ever used performance enhancing drugs. Canseco signed, but not before some diffidence, recounting on pages 154-155:

Technically, I didn’t have a single specific reason to believe that Roger had used steroids, but based on his behavior, and based especially on his performance, I had always felt he was using. But now, Jesus– I was very confused. I was sitting there with Roger and a bunch of lawyers, and I didn’t know what to think. I kept asking myself, Do I have one compelling reason to believe he used steroids? One single specific reason that convinces me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Roger was juicing? The answer was no. No, I did not.  And the more time I spent in that room, with the lawyers and with Roger, the more I came to believe that I’d been wrong about him.
So I signed the affidavit.
If it sounds confusing, that’s because it was confusing. I had an abrupt change of heart, yes, and I wish I could explain it better. I felt bad for Roger, sure, and I let myself get sucked into his drama. And maybe that’s exactly what Roger and his lawyers wanted. I honestly can’t say. All I can say is that suddenly Roger had me believing he had never juiced.
The sad part is that on February 13 (of 2008) I watched him go head to head with Brian McNamee, during the congressional hearings, and old Roger didn’t come off too good. Maybe I’d been right the first time. Maybe he had been juicing. And maybe I’d been wrong to change my mind. But in my heart, during my visit to Houston, I came to believe the guy. If I hadn’t believed him, I never would have signed that affidavit. And if I’m wrong about Roger, and he was juicing, I’m pretty sure we’ll know before this book even hits the stands.

I played around with Google, performing searches on some of the most sensational snippets of that excerpt.  Short of a book review on Vindicated from two years ago and some promotional material, nothing comes up. Amongst all the news stories I’ve read so far, only a couple outlets even reference Canseco’s conclusion in Vindicated about Clemens not using.

Ron Washington rode the white horse. So what?

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Most people will probably screw up in one way or another at some point in their lives. It’s only human to wreck a car or a marriage, to fail a class, to get fired from a job, maybe even to have problems with drugs, alcohol or the law.  When most folks fall short, they do so quietly, hopefully learning from their mistakes and moving on.  If they suffer setbacks, it isn’t plastered across the news, unless it’s something particularly egregious or bizarre.  This is all to their benefit, as anonymity is generally thought to be indispensable to recovery.

Celebrities rarely get this consideration. For all the privileges famous people receive, they don’t enjoy the essential right most people might take for granted of getting to deal privately with personal issues. Every day, there’s some unfortunate (and yes, entertaining) gossip in the news about an entertainer or athlete.  The more lurid the tale, the farther it spreads.  I admit I read every last story sometimes, but when I stop and think about it, I must say it’s a little amazing the standards celebrities and other well-known figures are often held to.

ESPN and other outlets trumpeted news Wednesday that the manager of the Texas Rangers, Ron Washington, tested positive for cocaine last year, and after some reflection, I have to say: So what?  Granted, I don’t condone the use of cocaine or other illegal drugs, but assuming Washington truthfully claimed he used only once, it seems he could have committed far worse transgressions.  His use didn’t keep him from fulfilling the duties of his job, as the Rangers finished 87-75.  Far as I know, Washington didn’t become addicted or get behind the wheel of a car or commit any crimes when he used cocaine, short of breaking some drug laws.

I admit I have fairly radical views regarding America’s policies on drugs.  Basically, I’m against drug use for me and anyone I care about.  I think if somebody has a problem with drugs or alcohol, they should stop.  That being said, I think we as a country waste tremendous amounts of time, money and resources that could be better put to use elsewhere when we condemn and prosecute recreational drug use.  I don’t really buy into the idea that purchasing drugs supports things like terrorism, but I do believe that criminalizing use drives up prices exponentially, thus increasing drug-related thefts and violence.  Were it up to me, all drugs would be legal, and we’d quit pointing fingers about who was using and who wasn’t, unless the use started affecting other lives.

By all accounts it sounds like Washington will emerge relatively unscathed from all this. He entered a drug program, kept his job and received support Wednesday from his players. Now, he can hopefully put this weird, little story behind him and focus on what looks to be a competitive race in the American League West.  This of course doesn’t resolve questions of how a 57-year-old man even gets offered cocaine, and I imagine this will probably be the wildest story we hear about a manager for some time.  All the same, Washington faces an easier road ahead than any player who really has a problem with drugs or alcohol.  How any of them has a chance of staying sober in this current media environment, I don’t know.

Notes on if Nomar Garciaparra did steroids and the questions we’re allowed to ask

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Nomar Garciaparra retired yesterday, which prompted the following Google search for me: Was Nomar on steroids? It’s a question debated in the baseball world many times in recent years, something I continue to wonder about, even as the former Boston Red Sox shortstop has never failed a drug test or admitted use or been under federal investigation or had his name included in a book or told Congress that his wife did HGH, like so many fallen ballplayers before him.  My search returned an interesting NBC Sports article posted earlier today.

The piece, written by Craig Calcaterra, decries the fresh round of speculation brought on by the retirement.  Calcaterra writes:

For the second time today I have to say that I don’t know if a player ever took PEDs, but I know the writer making the accusation doesn’t know either, yet does it anyway. And though I’m certain the answer will be “never,” I ask again: when will anyone in the mainstream media call out guys like Steve Henson (or Rick Telander or Jon Heyman) for hurling such accusations the way they called out blogger Jerrod Morris for doing something far, far less irresponsible?

And no, “because we think Nomar did it and [Raul] Ibanez didn’t” is not an acceptable answer. At least not for people who like to lecture others about “journalistic integrity” all the time.

All the same, there are many red flags regarding Garciaparra.  The obvious ones include:

  • A ripped physique, famously captured on this Sports Illustrated cover
  • Gaudy numbers in the early part of his career followed by significant injuries
  • Being a teammate of Jose Canseco
  • And perhaps most importantly, being a Major League Baseball player of any renown in the last twenty years

Sadly, few ballplayers have much credibility these days regarding steroids.  I suspect most recent players of juicing just as I assume lots of people in the late 1970s and early 1980s tried cocaine and even more folks a decade before that smoked pot.  All those things simply went with their respective times.  Steroid use in baseball has been well-documented.  Thus, I think it’s fair to speculate, within reason, if a player has used.  The journalist in me took umbrage when Morris got attacked on ESPN last summer by a couple of sportswriters after his infamous blog post.

That being said, I don’t know if Garciaparra did or did not use steroids.  I also don’t know if I care all that much, because end of day, Garciaparra isn’t bound for the Hall of Fame.  But in Garciaparra’s defense, an ESPN article by Peter Gammons suggests various reasons he was clean, including bodybuilders saying Nomar had love handles in his SI cover photo (but didn’t Bob have bitch tits in Fight Club?)  Also on the Nomar Was Clean front, it can be argued that Garciaparra was a prominent enough ex-teammate that Canseco would have named him in either of his books if he had dirt.

Again though, I’m uncertain.  I wouldn’t be comfortable betting one way or the other on this, and I feel similarly right now as I do before Maury Povich announces paternity test results on his show.  Is Nomar the father, so to speak?  Is he not?  My guess is as good as the next guy’s.

Alternate history: If Barry Bonds hadn’t used steroids

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Think of all the possibilities for Barry Bonds if he had never chosen to take steroids following the 1998 season.

I assume, of course, Game of Shadows correctly reported that Bonds began juicing following Mark McGwire’s record-setting 70-home-run year.  Bonds was a lock for the Hall of Fame beforehand, his generation’s version of Willie Mays.  Clean, Bonds was perhaps among the ten best offensive players of all-time.  After Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, there aren’t too many hitters I’d take before Bonds circa 1993.

Had Bonds stayed clean, we’d be preparing for his Hall of Fame induction in a not-too-distant summer, instead of wondering if he’ll ever get enough votes from the writers.  Bonds might not have set the home run record, but he likely would have gotten 3,000 hits, instead of stalling out at 2,935 when no one would sign him after 2007 because he was a steroid-addled clubhouse cancer.  Bonds might also have finished with a dozen Gold Gloves, instead of seven, since he stopped winning defensive awards when he started juicing.  Clean, Bonds would have solidified himself as the greatest left fielder ever.  Additionally, he may have been the first player with 600 home runs and 600 stolen bases.  That might have been harder to top than 756 home runs.

In some parallel universe, I like to think Bonds stayed clean.  After all, steroids weren’t his only option for changing himself.  Perhaps the following could have happened:

October 1998: Bonds finishes with 37 home runs, 122 runs batted in and a .303 batting average. It’s one of his best years, though it goes unnoticed as McGwire surpasses Roger Maris with 70 home runs.  Shortly after the season, childhood acquaintance Greg Anderson offers to put Bonds on a steroid regimen.  He unilaterally refuses.  Instead, he tries meditation.

1999: While Bonds in our universe struggles with steroid-related injuries and plays just 102 games, clean Barry plays 157 games, wins his eighth Gold Glove and begins to mend fences with teammates, notably Jeff Kent.  “I’ve been doing some work on myself, and I’m starting to realize I’ve been a selfish asshole most of my life,” Bonds tells Kent.  “What can I do to make things right?”  Kent tells Bonds to kiss his own ass.

2000: People have begun to note the unusual changes in Bonds.  “You don’t meet many players who’ve undergone such a profound spiritual transformation late in their career as Barry Bonds, it just doesn’t happen normally,” Dusty Baker tells Sports Illustrated, after the magazine names Bonds its Sportsman of the Year. “It’s one reason I decided to name my son after him instead of Darren Lewis.  Also, I didn’t want a kid named for a .250 hitter.”

2001: All the spiritual retreats and yoga pay off as calmer, happier Barry hits .340 with 42 home runs, 138 runs batted in and 36 stolen bases, winning his fourth Most Valuable Player award and carrying the Giants to their first World Series title since 1954.  Overjoyed, he appears on Oprah and jumps on her couch, beating Tom Cruise to this by nearly four years.  Interestingly, Bonds has also begun dating Katie Holmes by this time.

2002: Bonds saves little Barry Baker from being run over at home plate during the World Series, which the Giants win again.

2003-2004: Bonds starts to decline, approaching his 40th birthday.  He accepts it as part of aging and has his final full season and All Star appearance in 2004.  He also wins the Roberto Clemente Award, though he’s initially uncertain what this is.  After learning it is for the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team,” Bonds laughs for a full three minutes before conceding that, yes, maybe that kind of accolade is realistic now.

2005-2006: Bonds assumes a bench role with the Giants, sticking around for his 3,000th hit and to serve as elder statesman.  He retires in 2006, and the Giants promptly offer him a coaching job and begin planning a statue of him outside AT&T Park, near the one of Mays.

So, let’s recap.  In my version, Bonds wins the World Series twice, has his own statue and gets to sleep with Katie Holmes.  In real life, he’s under federal indictment and alienated from the baseball world, all alone.  When I stop and think about it, I don’t know which version is crazier.

P.S. Also in my version, Bonds retires with a head of wavy hair and gets to keep the Mr. Belvedere mustache.

10 baseball players who didn’t do steroids

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1. Ken Griffey Jr: The best clean player of the Steroid Era, Griffey’s only performance enhancer was playing in the Kingdome.

2. Derek Jeter: Jose Canseco, of all people, said he was sure Jeter never used steroids.  That’s good enough in my book. In an era of gaudy numbers, Jeter was, like Griffey, a throwback.

3-4. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine: If it ever emerges these guys took steroids, I think I’m done with baseball.  That means, basically, everybody used, even groundskeepers.  Then again, that seems unlikely, especially with Maddux and Glavine, two finesse pitchers with excellent longevity.

5. Albert Belle: A Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter recently asked Belle if he’d ever used steroids, as ‘roid rage could have explained his frequent emotional outbursts during his career.  Belle replied, “I was just an angry black man.”  Milton Bradley is going to get the chance to say the same thing in about ten years.

6. Ichiro Suzuki: Suzuki seems like another guy who belongs to another era, say 1910 (imagine how many more triples Suzuki would have got in the Deadball Era, when massive ballparks were standard.)  At it stands, he’s perhaps the best hitter of this era, steroids or not.  If I could have anyone from the last twenty years in my lineup, I might take Suzuki.

7. Omar Vizquel: I did a Google search on “Omar Vizquel steroids” to see if anything would come up.  There were of course a few blogs speculating he had used, including one in Cleveland that said Vizquel “needs to go back on his 2002 steroid regimen,” a possible explanation for why he hit a career-high 14 home runs that year.  That kind of sounds like sour grapes to me regarding Vizquel, an ex-Indian.  But the top search result, a 2006 Yahoo! Sports article said Vizquel “quietly embodies everything the Steroid Era does not.”  That sounds more apt.

8. Ben Grieve: I wish there were more stories out there like what follows about Grieve.  A book I recently read, Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed, finds the former American League Rookie of the Year retired and angry at all the players who used and prospered, while he stayed clean, struggled with injuries and retired early.  “I compare it to stealing money,” Grieve said via email in the book. “You are breaking the rules of baseball (as well as the law) in order to make money for yourself… I’m happy every time a player is accused because it demeans their accomplishments.”

9. Fred McGriff: There are a lot of recent baseball players who put up artificially inflated home run totals.  McGriff is one of the few who probably did it naturally. He is tied with Lou Gehrig with 493 career home runs and never had the surreptitious spike in power numbers that typically accompanied steroid use, I.E. he didn’t bust out with 56 home runs in 1999.  McGriff was a model of consistency in his 19-year career, and I’m a little surprised he hasn’t done better in the Hall of Fame vote (consider him a Veterans Committee pick waiting to happen, if nothing else.)

10. Rico Brogna: I racked my brain trying to come up with a tenth player, and got Brogna, who once told ESPN the Magazine that he considered using steroids late in his career when he was struggling with injuries but chose not to and quit playing shortly thereafter.  In this era, that’s more believable than, “I only took it once.”

A lot of guys didn’t make the list, including Tony Gwynn.  That might sound insane, but Gwynn put up some of his best slugging numbers late in his career, including in 1997 when he hit .372 with 17 home runs and 119 RBI at age 37.  Granted, at 38, Ted Williams had the second-highest slugging percentage, of his career, .731, nearly 100 points above his lifetime rate, and I would bet he didn’t use steroids.  Still, Williams had the luxury of not accomplishing his feat of ageless wonder at the zenith of the Steroid Era.  These days, everyone’s a suspect.

Related posts:

Got $1,000? Jose Canseco will spend a day with you

Seeing McGwire through Rose-colored glasses

Alternate history: If Barry Bonds hadn’t used steroids

Who to trust, Canseco or McGwire?

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Amid the hoopla surrounding Mark McGwire admitting he used steroids, an exchange he had with Bob Costas got my attention.  In an interview on MLB Network on Monday, Costas read excerpts from Jose Canseco’s autobiography, Juiced, which claimed he personally injected McGwire.

“‘Right before a game, we would load up our syringes and inject ourselves’,” Costas read, quoting the book.

“There’s absolutely no truth to that whatsoever,” McGwire responded immediately, not breaking eye contact besides to blink once.

“That’s not true?” Costas said.

“Absolutely not,” McGwire said.

“Why do you think Jose would say that?” Costas said.

“He had to sell a book,” McGwire said.

“So that didn’t happen, in the clubhouse?” Costas said

“Absolutely not,” McGwire said.  “I couldn’t be more adamant about that.”

Canseco, for his part, went on sports talk radio today, insisting he told the truth.  He had defended his former teammate one day prior.  As reprinted in the Oakland Tribune, where I read it, Canseco told Sirius XM Radio on Monday, “Mark, steroids or not, was one of the greatest nicest guys you could possibly meet.  People make a mistake and say, ‘Well, he used steroids.  He’s a bad guy.  He’s evil.  He’s not worthy.’  I extremely regret telling the truth.  I extremely regret writing that book.  This thing has taken on a life of it’s own, and it’s far from over, guys.”

But on Tuesday, following the interview with Costas, Canseco called McGwire a liar.

“I’m tired of justifying what I’ve said,” Canseco said. “I’ve polygraphed, I’ve proven that I’m 100 percent accurate. I never exaggerated. I told it the way it actually happened. I’m the only one who has told it the way it actually happened. Major League Baseball is still trying to defend itself. It’s strange. All I have is the truth, and I’ve proven that.”

What’s apparent here is one of these men is lying.  I’m not sure who I believe.  Both players lied or gave misleading statements during their careers.  McGwire vigorously denied using steroids in a Sports Illustrated cover story in 1998, while Canseco released a tutorial while playing for the A’s that said steroid use would be unwise because it would hinder quick twitch muscles.  He also claimed the following, in Juiced:

I remember one day during 2001 spring training, when I was with the Anaheim Angels in a game against the Seattle Mariners, Bret Boone’s new team. I hit a double, and when I got out there to second base I got a good look at Boone. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was enormous. “Oh my God,” I said to him. “What have you been doing?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

As reported by ESPN in 2005, the Mariners and Angels played five games that spring, and Canseco and Boone never encountered one another on the basepaths.

There’s also a part of me that feels Canseco knew, leading up to Juiced, that guys like McGwire, Boone and Jason Giambi were using steroids.  It had to be apparent.  I also think Canseco knew baseball would be unwilling to talk about steroids, providing him a great money-making opportunity.  So a part of me thinks he wrote about the obvious users and took creative liberties about their personal interactions where he had to.

I doubt Canseco called out anyone who wasn’t using, but it seems unlikely he and McGwire injected together at the ballpark.  McGwire and Canseco ran in different circles and had vastly different personalities, McGwire shy and reserved, Canseco charming and outgoing.  The Bash Brothers image about them was largely a marketing creation, just like the M&M image was for Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.  It seems more likely to me McGwire did steroids with his brother, a professional bodybuilder who lived with him.

This doesn’t mean Canseco has to fear a libel suit from McGwire.  Proving libel is not simply a matter of believing a person is lying.  There are two different thresholds for proof, depending on whether a private or public individual is claiming libel.  If a publication makes an error about a private individual, that individual need only prove negligence for a civil judgment.  McGwire is a public individual, though, so he would have to prove malice, that Canseco knew he was lying when he made his claims.  Proving that is typically difficult, if not impossible.  It’s why Barry Bonds may never do a day in jail.

What McGwire could prove, if he wanted to, is that Canseco’s book was devastating to his image.  But I doubt McGwire would go to those lengths, private as he is.

Seeing McGwire through Rose-colored glasses

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I emailed one of the guys that oversees this site today, curious what he thought of my post about Mark McGwire’s admission of using steroids.  He liked what I wrote and suggested I write about how upset Pete Rose would be.

“You know he is going to come out and say you banned me but hired a cheater that lied for 10 years,” my friend said.

I had to concur about baseball’s double standards. Rose got banned in 1989 for betting on baseball, while Ty Cobb remains in the Hall of Fame, despite the fact he told his biographer late in life that he killed a man in the street in 1912.  And Cobb is far from the only unsavory character in Cooperstown.  Longtime baseball writer Fred Lieb wrote in his memoir, Baseball As I Have Known It, that Rogers Hornsby, Tris Speaker and Gabby Hartnett told him they were members of the Ku Klux Klan (Lieb figured Cobb a member as well–what didn’t that guy do?) I could list dozens of personally flawed players if I wanted to.  Nobody’s perfect, really.

I’m not sure if I quite see Rose’s cheating as being on par with McGwire’s cheating.  No one ever said Rose hit a home run or won a game by gambling on it.  But I thought of another connection between the two men.

In a 1990 postscript to his seminal bestseller and playing diary of the 1969 season, Ball Four, Jim Bouton wrote about Rose.  Bouton called the all-time hit leader’s banishment from the game “cruel and unusual punishment.”  He declared baseball’s rule against gambling “an anachronism,” a response to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.

Bouton continued:

There’s no evidence that Pete Rose ever “threw” a ballgame.  But it is pretty clear that he’s a compulsive gambler, even though he denies it.  Today we know that compulsive gambling is an addiction, just like alcohol or drug addiction, and denial is part of the illness.  Accordingly, Rose should have been treated the same as baseball’s drug users; a one-year suspension and rehabilitation with Gamblers Anonymous.

In the wake of McGwire’s announcement today, many people around the blogosphere have been unloading on the former Cardinal slugger, including yours truly.  I stand by the statements I made earlier.  It is reprehensible that McGwire lied for so many years, however nice his belated honesty is.  But I can’t condemn him.  I might not support letting him in the Hall of Fame, at least just yet, but I also don’t support continuing to ostracize him from the game.

Addiction is considered by many a disease.  And steroids can be classed with narcotics like cocaine and marijuana as a drug of abuse.  Any recovering alcoholic who used steroids, except under advice of a doctor, would need to reset their sobriety date.  There are treatment programs for steroid abuse, just as there are for drugs, alcohol or compulsive spending.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that every baseball player who ever touched steroids is a drug addict.  I’ve heard only one in six people who use drugs typically become addicted.  Some people can take them or leave them.  But McGwire said he used steroids for 10 years.  That goes far beyond the experimental stage.

Stanton Peele, a psychologist who rejects the disease model of addiction writes on his website:

Simply discovering that a drug, or alcohol, or an activity accomplishes something for a person who has emotional problems or a particularly susceptible personality does not mean that this individual will be addicted. Indeed, most people in any such category are not addicts or alcoholics. Addicts must indulge in their addictions with sufficient abandon to achieve the addicted state. In doing so, they place less value on social proprieties or on their health or on their families and other considerations that normally hold people’s behavior in check.

The wild card in all this is that McGwire told Bob Costas he only used steroids for health reasons, not to gain strength and that he’d been given a gift to hit home runs.  That logic seems dubious, since steroids have been argued to help lead to injury.  Any health benefit would only come in the short term, if at all.

Whatever the case may be, McGwire sounds like a sick man.  When I look back on the Steroid Era for baseball, I see a lot of sick men.

Mark McGwire: The Confession

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Mark McGwire confirmed long-held suspicions today, admitting he used steroids during his playing career,  in an interview with the Associated Press.  McGwire had previously denied this publicly.

“I never knew when, but I always knew this day would come,” McGwire said in a statement issue today and posted on ESPN. “It’s time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected. I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize.”

McGwire said he first used steroids following the the 1989 season, briefly, and then in earnest beginning in 1993, including his record-setting 70 home run year in 1998.  He said he used off and on for a decade.  A source close to McGwire told ESPN he also used human growth hormone.  McGwire said he used drugs, in part, to recover from injuries.

“You don’t know that you’ll ever have to talk about the skeleton in your closet on a national level,” he told the AP. “I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength use.”

McGwire said he decided to come clean after becoming the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals.  Bud Selig and Tony La Russa were among those who praised the move Monday.

“I’m really encouraged that he would step forward,” said La Russa, who McGwire called to apologize to on Monday. “As we go along his explanations will be well received.”

During the 1998 season, McGwire stood silent while an Associated Press reporter, Steve Wilstein, was criticized by the baseball world and other journalists for reporting his use of androstenedione.  At the start of the year, McGwire also lied in a March 23, 1998 Sports Illustrated cover story, written by Tom Verducci.

Verducci wrote:

Many, including opposing players, believe he uses steroids. He denies the charge. Vehemently.

“Never,” says McGwire, though he admits he’ll “take anything that’s legal,” meaning dietary supplements. “It sort of boggles my mind when you hear people trying to discredit someone who’s had success. Because a guy enjoys lifting weights and taking care of himself, why do they think that guy is doing something illegal? Why not say, ‘This guy works really, really hard at what he does, and he’s dedicated to being the best he can be.’ I sure hope that’s the way people look at me.”

Personally, I remember reading that quote when it was new, and it’s bothered me since the andro controversy.  I’m glad McGwire has decided to finally get honest.  It takes guts to man up on a national stage, particularly when he had no reason he had to do so.  Still, this all somehow seems like too little, too late.