Archive for STEROIDS!
The Presinal/A-Rod connection starts an avalanche
Posted by: | CommentsThis Angel Presinal story just won’t go away, and something about it makes me think that it might be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. The vast majority of fans may no longer care, but this wide-reaching story has the potential to impact many of the game’s top current players. It might end up another tabloid-inspired red herring, but it also may make league and PA officials rethink their PED responses.
To recap: The fun started on Friday when the Daily News recapped an old revelation that A-Rod had trained with Angel Presinal in 2007, a few months before he appeared in the Mitchell Report. On Saturday, David Ortiz and Robinson Cano defended Presinal from hearsay anonymous accusations and not-so-veiled attacks on his character. As RAB commenter J.R. noted, Ortiz’s words, coming from a rival team, seemed to carry some weight.
But yesterday, two more stories broke that could trigger an avalanche, if not an investigation. In a four-page feature, the Daily News, filing the story from the Dominican Republic and New York, reported that Presinal is a PED pusher and has a way of ensuring that players pass their tests:
According to a former baseball scout, who worked with players who trained with Presinal in the Dominican, Presinal provided some players with steroids. The former scout declined to be named in this story but says that players refer to Presinal as “The Cleaner,” someone who can rid traces of steroids from the players’ urine before a drug test.
“He puts them through a cycle and then they flush the body out,” the former scout said. “If you’re afraid of testing positive, this is the guy to go to.” He said players are afraid to discuss Presinal because they depend on his expertise as a trainer. It is also expensive to work with Presinal, according to the former scout, who says the trainer charges as much as $10,000 for an offseason session.
Who knows if this is true? Who knows if these aren’t the words of a scout disgruntled with Presinal? As far as I know, MLB testing is random so players wouldn’t have the time to flush their system prior to a scheduled test. But if true, these are allegations that will spur another thorough investigation into the current state of drug use in the game instead of some misguided George Mitchell-led effort to stir up the past.
Furthermore, the Daily News also reported this weekend that Presinal won’t be training the DR team at the 2009 WBC. He is officially persona non grata from organized baseball, and the current players who train with him should probably rethink that decision.
When all is said and done, these recent developments may push baseball into further addressing PED use today. For the last three of four years, baseball officials and reporters have been singularly focused on outing past drug use, and while extensive testing programs are now in place, this story has become more about exposing and attempting to atone for the past than it has been about cleaning up the present. Those of us who care, even a little bit, about the drug issue may find a current scandal all the motivation for a better fix.
Anyway, that’s that. Games start on Thursday. Maybe we can put all of this nasty business behind, but something tells me this story is here to stay this year.
Ortiz, Cano defend Presinal
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday’s not-so-new revelations that A-Rod had trained with the Angel Presinal generated a good amount of discussion on RAB. While Presinal has been linked to PED use via the Mitchell Report and various journalistic investigations, numerous Dominican players have turned to him as a trainer.
Today, The Times notes that MLB is again turning a wary eye toward Presinal in light of the revelations that he trained with A-Rod during the period of the Yankee slugger’s admitted PED use. While Presinal has engaged in “he said/he said” battle with Major League Baseball officials over Juan Gonzalez’s 2001 steroid use, MLB has formally banned Presinal from the game in the U.S.
Back home in the DR, however, it is a different story. Presinal trained the Dominican Republic WBC team in 2006, and yesterday both David Ortiz and Robinson Cano defended their trainer.
This is, of course, a dicey situation. Cano said he wasn’t concerned about being, as Kat O’Brien put it, “guilty by association,” but with the way the steroid witch hunts are conducted, the company one keeps weights heavily upon the court of media — if not public — opinion. Hopefully, Presinal’s steroid transgressions are things of the past because the players who swear by him are not inclined to stop.
Damon puts it all in perspective
Posted by: | CommentsAs Friday night turns into Saturday morning, the Yankees are one day closer to Opening Day. Hopefully by April, A-Rod won’t dominate the headlines. I’m sure that’s naive wishful thinking on my part, but a man can dream.
Anyway, here’s something to chew on overnight. iYankees directs us to an apt Johnny Damon quote from the ProJo Sox Blog:
Damon: “Yeah he did some bad things, he took a steroid. I definitely do not condone that at all, but there could be a lot worse things he could have been doing. He hasn’t done a crime … so, there’s worse things he could have done, but I’ve known Alex since he was 15 and he’s always been super-nice to me, so I’m going to support him and try to help him through this time.”
Reporter: Johnny, what would have been worse?
Damon: “Murdering someone. There’s plenty of things that could have been worse than what he did.”
That basically sums up this whole thing in a nutshell. Many members of the media act as though A-Rod has committed high treason while the players seem to see it as a bad mistake he made a few years ago. He certainly never killed anyone, as Damon noted, and there are far, far worse things he couldn’t do.
Meanwhile, A-Rod seems to recognize that if he and the Yanks win, all will be forgiven. That’s life in the Bronx.
A-Rod tied to disgraced trainer Presinal
Posted by: | CommentsUpdate 1:45 p.m.: Chris directs us to a 2007 ESPN.com article in which the reporter notes that A-Rod had trained with Angel Presinal. So now it appears as though the Daily News is simply re-reporting old news while intimated a steroid/PED connection. This may very well be much ado about nothing for A-Rod, and I’m inclined to believe that this may not be a very compelling story after all.
* * *
I desperately wish we could all buy into Murry Chass’ call to move on with this whole A-Rod thing already. I wish we could be confident that A-Rod put the story to bed earlier this week with a mostly heartfelt and mostly accurate apology.
We can’t however quite put this behind us yet because this story is still developing in ways that could impact A-Rod and the Yankees this season, and it’s quite possible that the S word — suspension — could be back on the table.
The fun started when ESPN Deportes discovered that primobolan is not available over the counter in the DR as A-Rod claimed. That aspect of this story is hardly news. The Dominican is not famous for its exacting pharmacological standards, and from all accounts, it has been as easy to secure steroids and supplements in the DR as it is to by Advil and Claritin at Duane Reade. So fine. Big deal.
What is actually a big deal though is the latest development from the Daily News: A-Rod has reportedly been linked to Angel Presinal, the one-time MLB trainer who, along with Juan Gonzalez, was linked to a bag of steroids in 2001. According to the Daily News’ sources, A-Rod has been involved with Presinal as recently as 2007. If true, this revelation would cast some serious doubt on Rodriguez’s claim that he has been clean since
In fact, according to Andrew Marchand, the Commissioner’s Office could suspend A-Rod as they investigate his link to Presinal. According to the Daily News, A-Rod was warned that his association with Presinal could be trouble for him. (The article also notes that MLB monitors Presinal’s whereabouts. If true, wouldn’t MLB have known that he was associating himself with A-Rod? As poorly as Selig handled this steroid scandal, the league’s investigative unit is nothing but thorough.)
I want to be able to believe that A-Rod was just seeing Presinal to work out with a trainer. But considering that Presinal and A-Rod’s now-infamous cousin are linked by the Daily News, this cat isn’t going back into the bag any time soon. It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.
A double standard for A-Rod (and his cousin)
Posted by: | CommentsUpdate (2:30 a.m.): Who had 36 hours in the “find A-Rod’s cousin” pool? Intrepid ESPN.com reporter Amy K. Nelson along with a producer from ESPN Deporters discovered the identity of A-Rod’s anonymous cousin and respectfully left him alone dug up his story. Basically, Yuri Sucart, a Miami resident is indeed the cousin to whom A-Rod referred on Tuesday. According to ESPN’s sources, Sucart has long “lived his life vicariously” through A-Rod and would do the superstar’s bidding.
Now that this once-suspect version of A-Rod’s story has been proven to be true, the media witch hunt continues to look more and more biased against A-Rod.
* * *
I don’t particularly envy Derek Jeter right now. For the last 13 seasons, Derek Jeter has been the face of the New York Yankees, and over the last 15 months, he’s watched as some of the key players who have surrounded him have succumbed to the steroid scandal.
In Dec. 2007, George Mitchell’s incomplete trainwreck of a steroid investigation revealed numerous drug users on the Yanks’ teams from 2000, and Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens took the their fair share of criticism. Three years before that, Jason Giambi apologized to, well, something that we all took to mean steroid use. Meanwhile, Jeter has supposedly led a clean career in an era filled with PED-enhanced ballplayers.
This week, when finally given the chance to speak to the media yet again, the Yankee Captain issued something more than the vanilla statements for which he has become famous. While expressing his support for A-Rod, he also voiced his disappointment.
Beyond this rare showing of an opinion from Jeter, though, was his statement on the way the steroid scandal — and the so-called Steroid Era — has been covered in retrospect. “Everybody wasn’t doing it,” he said to a gaggle of reporters at Steinbrenner Field yesterday afternoon. “That’s the thing that gets irritating. I think it sends the wrong message to baseball fans and kids, saying that everybody was doing it. That’s just not the truth.”
In a way, Jeter’s criticism is one the fans have been leveling at the media this week. The reporters have seemingly gone overboard in their zealous glee surrounding the A-Rod story. For example, take Daily News reporter Mark Feinsand’s lengthy pieces slamming A-Rod here and here.
As with many who cover the Yanks, Feinsand feels that A-Rod’s apologies have been more scripted than real. He feels that the Yanks’ third baseman should, for the good of the game, just take responsibility for what he did without blaming his cousin, his youth, the pressure of fame or anything else. In all fairness to Mark, he has some good points. After all, how sorry can A-Rod really be when he will exit this game having made well over $400 million in salary alone?
It’s not, however, just this reaction to A-Rod that seems so off. Rather, it’s the reaction to A-Rod coupled with the reaction to Andy Pettitte’s HGH admission from last December. Take a read through Feindsand’s piece on Pettitte. “Good for him,” Feinsand wrote, commending Pettitte for owning up to his mistakes and attempting to put the past behind him. Talk about a double standard.
Of course, this may not be an unfair double standard. After all, Andy Pettitte didn’t go live on national TV to tell Katie Couric he never used steroids. But while A-Rod has been just as forthcoming as Pettitte, the media has been ruthless. Maybe they expected A-Rod to be a bigger figure in the game. Maybe everyone is collectively disappointed that A-Rod, when he eclipses Bonds’ home run totals in a few years, will hold a still-tainted record. Whatever the reason, A-Rod is being far more scrutinized than anyone who has so far admitted to drug use.
Meanwhile, over at the Worldwide Leader, Gene Wojchiechowski is ready to start A-Rod’s clock anew beginning today. Sounds good to me.
Dispensing with the who, what and when of it all
Posted by: | CommentsDo you remember where you were six years ago? Do you remember what you did everyday for three years in between 2001-2003? Do you remember what you ate and what you drank? Do you remember, down to the minute, with whom you spent all your time?
In the aftermath of Alex Rodriguez’s press conference this afternoon, that level of detail is basically what media members and many Yankee fans are now demanding from A-Rod. It’s a patently absurd standard for those of us with the best of memories, and it just doesn’t matter.
Ten days ago, A-Rod’s world came crashing down when Sports Illustrated reported on his failed — and supposedly anonymous — drug test in 2003. From his opt-out antics to Madonna to steroids, he went from an image-conscious superstar to a circus sideshow to a three-ring event in the span of a few hours.
On the flip side was the media. In the span of ten years, from 1998 when the AP started reporting about Andro to today, the people tasked with covering the game have gone from complicity to outrage. Once it was taboo to report about supplements in baseball; today, if the reporters can’t play the Gotcha Game with A-Rod, they fail at their jobs.
Meanwhile, A-Rod is up a creek without a paddle. Today, for reasons unknown, he spun a tale involving his cousin and another unknown supplement. There’s no reason to believe this to be a false one. After all, for years baseball players have been injecting, swallowing and rubbing anything in or into their bodies that they felt would give them a not-so-natural edge. Of course, it would have been better for A-Rod to come out with a laundry list of substances he took and the dates he took them without excusing away his poor decisions.
Great. That is perhaps not the best strategy in an effort to exculpate one’s self, but I have a bigger question: Who cares about the minutiae? We know Mike Francesca does. We know plenty of holier-than-thou reporters all of a sudden seem to care, but it doesn’t matter.
Alex Rodriguez has been publicly shamed. His reputation is in tatters, and as a potential future Hall of Famer, he’s admitted to more drug use than anyone else who has stepped forward so far. Barry Bonds hasn’t accepted any responsibility for his actions, and neither has Roger Clemens. Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi should be commended for coming forward, but they were rather guarded about it. Mark McGwire just doesn’t want to talk about the past, and even Ivan Rodriguez believes that “only God knows” if he is on the list of 103 other players.
Even still, it doesn’t matter. He’s come forward; he’s admitted his wrongs; he made a lot of mistakes over an indeterminate length of time; he’s apologized. That’s that. In the comments to our liveblog, RAB readers are debating this until they are blue in the fingers, but it’s done. The skeptics of the sports world may not like it, but it’s time to move on, at least until the next tell-all book hits the shelves and everyone get all riled up all over again.
A-Rod PED Press Conference Liveblog
Posted by: | CommentsSo today’s the day everyone in the New York media has been waiting for. At 1:30 this afternoon Alex Rodriguez will sit down in Tampa and face the media music about his PED use. The Yanks have set up fifteen additional chairs (according to ESPN) for teammates to come out and support him, with Joe Girardi, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira expected to be there. Buster Olney and PeteAbe have already chimed in with what they think should go down today, and to save you the time of reading their posts, they boil down to “tell the media everything we want to know.”
Me? I honestly don’t care. He revealed more in his interview with Gammons than any PED user we’ve seen, yet that’s not enough. The details of his PED use is inconsequential to me, and I think that most fans feel the same way. No matter what A-Rod says today, it’ll never be enough. Anything short of revealing exact reasons why, exact dates, exact substances, exact cycling schedules, and exact sources while strapped to a lie detector with the dude from Lie to Me staring him down won’t be enough. I just want some baseball.
ESPN will be broadcasting the presser live, as will YES, MLB Network and SNY. MLB.com will also be providing coverage, but I’m not sure if it’s video or just audio. Either way, I got your back if you’re stuck in the office. Hopefully this is the last time I have to do one of these things.
What Ortiz said
Posted by: | Comments
In about four hours, Alex Rodriguez is going to face death by media. The venerable and not-so-venerable members of the sports media are going to gather in Tampa as A-Rod, flanked by a bunch of Yankee lifers, faces spontaneous questions from the keepers of the press for the first time since his televised confession to Peter Gammons last week.
When the dust settles, again, around A-Rod, the media will have cared far more than PED-fatigued fans do. A-Rod will, of course, hear boos when the Yanks hit the road, and he will probably hear boos when the Yanks return to the Bronx on April 16. But how is that different from any other year? This press conference will truly be the media trying to bury a broken man while attempting to somehow atone for decades of ignoring the clubhouse story that was unfolding right before their very eyes.
Now, we can bury the media some other time. This morning, let’s talk about someone else speaking out against steroid use in baseball. This player — a very prominent member of the Boston Red Sox — exploded onto the baseball scene in 2003, and Yankee fans always viewed this gregarious player with a raised eyebrow. Of course, that ignores the fact that he had a stellar rookie campaign, battled injuries in Minnesota and was generally misused by his manager before arriving in a hitter-friendly park with arguably the best right-handed hitter of his generation backing him up in the line up. (And that’s just a case of “who really knows?”)
Yesterday, David Ortiz criticized steroid use in baseball in a lengthy interview with Nick Cafardo. YFSF highlighted the interesting bits — and remember that A-Rod and Ortiz are very close friends:
“I think that the A-Rod situation, it was a little bit tough for the game,” Ortiz said. “Talking about the best player all the way around. At the same time, people have to give the guy credit because he came out with what he said at the point of his career where he had done it all. On top of that, that was what? Six years ago? The guy has put up numbers his whole career. It was one thing that he said that caught my attention was that he was young and at the time. . . . sometimes you make the wrong decision like he did. He’s been playing clean and he’s still producing. He’s still been the best player in the game. If I’m a fan and I had to judge the guy, I would put that in the past and move forward. The guy, he works hard, man. He’s still doing his thing. He’s still got nine more years on his contract where he’s definitely gonna do some damage still.”
[snip]
“I think you clean up the game by the testing. I test you, you test positive, you’re going to be out. Period,” Ortiz said. “If I test positive using any kind of banned substance I’m going to disrespect the game, my family, my fans and everybody. And I don’t want to face the situation so I won’t use it. I’m sure everybody is on the same page.”
“From what I’ve seen right now from the testimony that Alex gave, I would say it was very low the percentage that wasn’t using it. Like he said, that’s what was going around the league at the time. What else do you want? But in 2004 when they came out with the testing, I guarantee the percentage has been going down.”
Ortiz expressed his belief that around 80 or 90 percent of the game is now clean. Who knows if that’s naivete, undetectable designer drugs, the truth or some combination of all three? We just don’t know anymore.
Meanwhile, Paul, one of the Sox fans at YFSF, has an apt conclusion to his post on the matter. “One thing I’m surprised no one asked,” he writes, “especially given Ortiz’s previous comments about the GNC products from the Dominican, is whether he’s one of the 103 other names.”
The problem with David Ortiz’s statement is that you can’t hop in a time machine and ban everyone in 1999. You can’t really save baseball from the past. Ortiz is hitting on all the right things if you care about PED use and the pall it may or may not have cast over the game. But in the end, it’s not really Ortiz who is right.
Rather, the one person who was right is the one most overlooked and quite tarred by the scandal. On May 17, 2005, Mark McGwire said, “I’m not here to talk about the past.” That’s really the best thing right now for baseball. Officials, players, agents, owners can point as many fingers as they won’t, but the only action that will solve this PR problem is to move forward.
For now, though, we’ll just have to a few hours until A-Rod is ready to talk about the past.
In search of the Boss’ love
Posted by: | CommentsWith former teammates questioning his credibility on the first day of Spring Training, Alex Rodriguez may be in for a long 2009, and the Yankees’ Front Office seems to be keeping their slugger at arm’s distance. A-Rod will face the media circus on Tuesday, and the team wants him to be as forthcoming as possible. Meanwhile, Ken Davidoff wonders if George Steinbrenner’s tough love would have helped A-Rod save face. At this point, not even King George at his finest could have saved baseball from itself right now.
Selig talks suspension for A-Rod
Posted by: | CommentsBud Selig is one of the bigger problems with the steroid era. While he faced a combative players association, he rarely stepped up to speak out against drugs in the game until it became a national scandal. Since then, he has never punished a suspected — or known — PED user for failing a test prior to 2004 when mandatory punishments were enacted. Today, in an interview with USA Today, Selig says that he “would have to think about” suspending Alex Rodriguez.
In a nutshell, that’s a complete and utter joke. The PA would throw a fit about it, and that Selig even mentions it is reason enough for me to say he should resign. This isn’t leadership; this is public grandstanding. Somehow, despite the fact that A-Rod took PEDs, lied about it on national television and chose softy Peter Gammons to interview him on Monday, the media reaction — between Roberts’ book and Selig’s interview — has nearly turned A-Rod into a sympathetic victim. That’s as bad a reflection on the state of baseball as A-Rod’s PED use six years ago is.
