When Jason Giambi was building the buzz that would lead to him signing a nine-figure contract with the New York Yankees, he looked like he should have been playing for the Oakland Raiders, not the Athletics.
His muscles didn’t bulge; they erupted. He stands 6 feet 3 inches, but had the wide-bodied girth of Paul Bunyan, if not Babe the Blue Ox. His size did not go unnoticed, either, as Sports Illustrated made him the focus of its reporting on creatine, a conditioning supplement that players credited for allowing them to work longer and more productively in the gym.
Fast forward to this spring, in the first year that Major League Baseball has been allowed to discipline players who test positive for steroids, and Giambi reported to spring training looking more like John Olerud than the late John Matuszak.
He claims to have lost only four pounds since 2003, when he delivered his usual 40-plus home runs and 100-plus RBIs. If he is telling the truth, it is only proof that muscle really does weigh more than fat.
Giambi said he sought to lose some weight to take pressure off his surgically repaired left knee. He claimed to have weighed 232 pounds a year ago (even the Yankees’ media guide lists him at 235) and to have dropped to 228 this winter.
“I just cleaned up my diet,” said Giambi, who is guaranteed $120 million. “I stopped eating fast food, bottom line. I stopped eating In-N-Out burgers. If anything, my legs aren’t as big because I’ve rehabbed them so hard. Losing some of that excess body fat I had is going to make a big difference for me this year.”
Few, including many of his fellow players, believe him. This is the spring when steroid suspicions have begun to be verbalized by those in the game, not just former players like Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco.
Colorado Rockies pitcher Turk Wendell pointed a finger at Barry Bonds. Denny Neagle, another veteran with Colorado, also put Giambi in the mix.
“It is a pretty good coincidence that some of the names that are linked to [steroids] are the guys who are the big, massive, overmuscular-looking guys,” Neagle said. “And guys who did go through some serious body changes. I don’t know or remember what Jason Giambi looked like back in his early days, but I know he wasn’t as big as [in recent years]. The jury is always going to be out on Barry.”
Though Houston Astros slugger Jeff Bagwell didn’t use names, he spoke for almost every player in the sport when he was asked if he has looked at some players and suspected them of using steroids.
“Of course,” Bagwell said.
This unpleasant period of tattling and finger-pointing is the next unavoidable chapter in Major League Baseball’s slow-moving efforts to rid the game of steroids, which clearly appear to have contributed to the record-setting home-run totals produced from 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shattered Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61, to 2001, when Bonds hit 73 to break McGwire’s record of 70.
Because of historically strident opposition of the players union to any form of testing, which it stonewalled on constitutional grounds while unions in other sports gave in, big-league baseball was the last frontier where athletes could put any substance they wanted in their bodies.
When the Major League Baseball Players Association accepted limited testing during the labor negotiations in 2002, officials in other sports ridiculed the plan as little more than window dressing. World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound dismissed it as a joke.
But it is does appear to be having a major impact.
One highly placed MLB official said this isn’t a problem that developed “overnight,” dating its growth through 15 or 20 years. “Usage continued growing and growing, but the union didn’t want to do anything about it,” he said. “Now we finally have something we can do. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but [the plan approved in 2002] is a start. We know the problem isn’t going to go away overnight. But you’re going to see progress.”
If fewer than 5 percent of players had tested positive during an anonymous survey conducted in 2003, MLB’s program effectively would have been neutered. But many players apparently continued using banned substances, in part because they knew users would not be identified or punished. Yet some players, including the Cubs’ Sosa, appeared noticeably smaller than they had been in 2002, and home-run totals dropped across the board.
For the first time since the strike-shortened 1994 season, no major-leaguer hit 50 homers, let alone 60 or 70. The major-league total declined to 5,207 (2.1 per game) from the record 5,693 (2.3 per game) in 2000, a dip Bonds attributes to “softer baseballs” and Sosa declines to discuss.
But even President Bush is making steroids an issue. The former managing partner of the Texas Rangers urged professional sports to rid themselves of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, which have trickled down to even teenage athletes.
The federal judiciary has done its part to focus attention on steroid use. Several players, including Bonds, Giambi, Gary Sheffield, A.J. Pierzynski and former White Sox outfielder Armando Rios testified before a grand jury investigating a San Francisco company that supplies performance-enhancing drugs to athletes. So did NFL players Bill Romanowski and Tyrone Wheatley and track stars Marion Jones and Kelli White.
About a month before the start of spring training, the BALCO investigation led to four men, including Greg Anderson, being named in a 42-count indictment for drug trafficking and money laundering.
Pound sees the indictment as a major victory for anti-steroid forces. “It’s a giant step forward,” he said. “It really gives teeth to what President Bush said last month. When the top leadership of the United States gets behind something like this, it’s very formidable.”
Anderson is a lifelong friend of Bonds who was given access to the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse as Bonds’ personal trainer.
If Anderson, BALCO founder Victor Conte or either of the other two defendants have their cases reach court, it could force Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield or other star players onto the witness stand in open court.
“Can you imagine if they name names in public?” one veteran player told the New York Daily News. “This could be the biggest disaster for the game since the Black Sox.”
Players are also unhappy that MLB could cooperate with the BALCO grand jury, which has subpoenaed the drug tests that were collected a year ago. Though the majority of players appear in support of additional testing, many are uncomfortable with subpoenas going to Comprehensive Drug Testing of Long Beach, Calif., and Quest Diagnostics in Teterboro, N.J., which collected urine samples from players.
“There has to be a fight,” New York Mets reliever Mike Stanton said. “It’s not just Major League Baseball that is involved here–this is a joint program conducted with the Players Association. They have a legal responsibility to keep these tests anonymous and confidential. We signed a contract. That is legally binding.”
There’s an unfair nature to this environment. A cloud of suspicion spreads over many players who were not willing to risk their health and reputation to secure a pharmaceutical advantage, prompting Cubs manager Dusty Baker to call it “McCarthyism.”
Houston second baseman Jeff Kent, the National League’s MVP in 2000, has felt the scrutiny.
“The point is, we’re all tainted,” he said.
Kent said Babe Ruth had the kind of performance, build and behavior that in the current era would have caused him to be viewed as a steroid user.
“Babe Ruth didn’t do steroids?” Kent asked. “How do you know?”
Houston Chronicle columnist John Lopez points out that there were no synthetic performance enhancers in 1927. Germany’s Adolph Butenandt and Switzerland’s Leopold Ruzicka won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their study of steroids in 1939. It is believed Germany first used them on frail prisoners of war in World War II and Soviet wrestlers introduced them to sports at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
That appears to clear Ruth. Active players, and recently retired sluggers like McGwire, have no such blanket immunity.
Bagwell understands he fits the profile of a potential user. He is a skilled hitter with a lifetime .300 average, but he also has been known for a developed upper body, with muscle mass contributing to his 419 career home runs, including 39 per season over the last seven years. He reported to spring training at 208 pounds, down at least 15 pounds from recent years.
“I know there’s going to be speculation,” he said. “How can there not be?”
Bagwell is an outspoken supporter of testing.
“I would like people to know the guys who did it with hard work,” he said, “who went out and busted their butt, spent time in the weight room, did all the things they were supposed to do.”
Bagwell was asked why he never tried them.
“Because I didn’t want to have to answer these questions,” he said. “I would feel awful if all the hard work I’ve done was wasted because I was caught taking steroids. The next thing you know, everything you ever did is out the window.”
