Juiced (17 page)

Before the 1997 season, the Oakland A's decided to take another chance on me, and made a trade with Boston to bring me back to the Bay Area and reunite me with Mark McGwire. The A's were going through another down period in those years, and they were hoping that news of the Bash Brothers playing together again might generate some fan interest. It did, too. As soon as fans heard about my return to the Bay Area, off-season ticket sales jumped to their highest level in three years. There was some speculation that Mark would feel weird about having me back, since I had a way of grabbing all the attention for myself, but actually he seemed glad to have me on the team again if it meant he would get more decent pitches to hit. "Life hasn't been easy for him," Mark said of me at the time. "His child has made him a better person. I think it's going to be great this time around."

But that year I witnessed what was almost the definitive case study in the difference between the careful, controlled use of steroids I've always advocated and sheer recklessness. I'm talking, of course, about Jason Giambi, who became my teammate that year. As surely as he went overboard with partying and chasing women, Giambi went overboard with steroids. He became the single most vocal, outright juicer in the game, and nobody cared. He was a fun-loving guy, a party animal, and people loved him, especially since he was hitting and helping the team. The man could party like you wouldn't believe, but he got the job done at the ballpark.

Giambi had the most obvious steroid physique I've ever seen in my life. He was so bloated, it was unbelievable. There was no definition to his body at all. You could see the retention of liquids, especially in his neck and face; to those in the know, that was a sure sign of steroid overload, plus drinking a lot and having a bad diet. Combine that, and you end up with that chubby, thick, bloated look. You could literally put your finger on his skin and see the water under there as it indented and then filled in. That's not muscle! More dead giveaways: the color of his skin, and the reddish pimples.

It was clear to me from watching him that Giambi got turned on to steroids while he was under Mark McGwire's wing. In 1996, the previous year and Giambi's rookie season, those two had become inseparable, spending a lot of time together away from the ballpark. McGwire was like Giambi's big brother; he took him under his wing and taught him everything he knew about baseball, which was a lot. Giambi looked up to Mark. He would do anything Mark would do. At times, he would actually mimic him. Mark taught him the finer points of the game, about how to conduct yourself on the field and off. And given how much I'd been spreading the word about steroids, it was no surprise when I saw Giambi start to bulk up, too.

As soon as I rejoined the team for the 1997 season, I was amazed to see how open and casual those two were about steroids. Sometimes, the three of us would go into the bathrooms stalls together to shoot up steroids or growth hormone. I would inject myself, and Giambi and McGwire would be one stall over, injecting each other. Other times, I preferred to inject myself at home, but those two always did it at the ballpark, because it was easier that way and they knew they had nothing to worry about.

Plus, they were having all kinds of fun injecting.

The three of us talked about steroids all the time that year, right in front of everybody. "My God, your veins are incredible what are you using?" Giambi might ask me, right out on the field during stretching or batting practice.

"Same stuff you're using," I'd say. "Deca and Winstrol."

"Wow, you've got the biggest arms," Giambi would say.

"Look at McGwire," I'd point out. "He's got the biggest arms here! Look at them! They're enormous!"

Or we might ask each other practical questions-especially Giambi, who was getting an education in steroids from McGwire and me that year.

"What dosage do you take?" he'd ask, just before taking his swings in the batting cage. "Are you due for a shot?" he might ask.

A lot of times, he wasn't really curious about the answer, he was just enjoying talking and thinking about steroids, about what they could do for his physique and his numbers. This was light conversation, and we never bothered to stop unless a reporter was around. By 1997, in front of anyone but the media, it was completely accepted that we would talk openly about steroids.

Before too long, it seemed like everybody was doing it. The bathroom stalls were the laboratory, and players would inject themselves right there. Everyone knew why you were going in there; they'd see two guys going into a stall together, and make cracks.

"What are you guys, fags?" they would joke. But they knew we were going in to inject each other. It was as commonly accepted as getting a cup of coffee or a drink of water.

I remember instances where a guy had his syringe and a bottle of steroids in his coat pocket because we were going to travel that day. When the guy put on his coat, a needle and a vial would all fall out, and it was no big deal.

"Who does this belong to?" someone would ask.

It wasn't as if the player had to hide what he was doing.

"Oh, yeah, it's mine," he would say, and get it back, and that would be that.

The things guys would say during a game were another telltale sign. A pitcher might put the ball right in on your hands and break your bat, but you were so strong, you'd still take a powerful enough swing to send the ball sailing into shallow center field for a single. "How can we compete against this?" a pitcher would yell out from the mound, adding in a few swear words, and everyone from the base coaches to the other players to the umpires would know just what he meant by "this."

A lot of guys would carry their steroids around with them in a little black shaving bag. A complete kit would include clean syringes, vials of the different types of steroids and growth hormone they were injecting, and cotton swabs and alcohol, because we were always very careful about using proper technique. If you swabbed with alcohol every single time you injected and never used the same needle twice, there was no reason to expect any problem with infection.

Giambi was one guy who just tossed his little black shaving bag into his suitcase and brought all his steroid paraphernalia on the road with him.

Holy shit! I said when I saw how casual he and the other guys were about traveling with their steroids. I never brought steroids with me on the road, unless they were in pill form, which were easy to hide anywhere. But Giambi and some of the other guys would bring them in their suitcases-needles, vials, and all. I was thinking, "What if they inspect our bags?" But we always had charter flights, and we would go straight from the ballpark to the charter, fly to the next city, and then from the charter straight to the hotel. They loaded the bags right onto the team bus, no questions asked.

The world of baseball is like a closed society, with its own rules and structures and rituals, not really that different from one of those strange secret fraternities like Skull and Bones at Yale, the one that included both George W. Bush and John Kerry as members. One of the fundamental rules of baseball is that certain players were untouchables-and over time those players learned to use that power to the advantage of other players, too.

Mark McGwire was still one of the chosen ones, so that meant that Jason Giambi was protected, too. Everybody in the game knew that Giambi had been molded by McGwire, and whatever McGwire wants, he gets. With McGwire at his back, Giambi was as good as gold-from the owners to the media.

Did you ever open the newspaper and see a headline like, GIAMBI SEEN IN NIGHTCLUB WITH 3 OR 4 GIRLS? No, because the media wouldn't touch him. (At least, not back then.)

It's impossible to measure how much steroids can help you, since each individual is different and steroids can have varying effects on different body types. But it's clear that steroids and growth hormone turned Jason Giambi into a completely different ballplayer. When he was starting out, it seemed to me that he was an average player with average ability. Look at his brother, Jeremy: He was a below-average player with below-average ability. Then all of a sudden Jason bolted out of the gate.

Giambi was a doubles hitter when he first came up. Then, as he got so much bigger, he started hitting a lot more home runs.

But he paid for that transformation. Over the months and years, you could see that he was overdoing testosterone, which is a retaining agent. He didn't seem to realize that a baseball player should only be taking a low dosage of testosterone, and balance it with a ripping agent, like Winstrol or Deca or Equipoise. So instead of looking like a baseball player, he looked more like a professional wrestler.

To players who watched Jason Giambi up close, he was always an amazing character. Before he got engaged, he was an astonishing ladies' man, in a whole different league from most ballplayers. But he was always a real nice guy, happy-go-lucky, and as long as he got to the ballpark on time and performed, nobody seemed to care what he did with his night life.

Today, though, times have changed. I used to be the poster boy for steroids in baseball, but today I'd have to say the new poster boy is Jason Giambi. Before you know it, there may be a new sacrificial lamb, a new flavor of the month.

Today, these players may seem like pariahs. But don't be too surprised if some day we look back on some of them as pioneers.

16. Baseball Economics 101

It's no secret what's going on in baseball. At least half
the guys are [on steroids].
- KEN CAMINITI

In that same 1997 season, Miguel Tejada made his major-league debut with the A's. As I got to know him a little bit, I started giving him advice about steroids, and he seemed interested in what I was saying. Tejada and I had a secret weapon: We could speak in Spanish, which made it easier to talk about whatever he wanted, even if reporters were around. I met him in spring training, but I injured myself in August right around the time he was called up from Double-A to make his major-league debut, so we never had a chance to talk as much as I would have liked. But it was obvious to me why he was so interested in steroids: Basic economics.

Back when I was starting out in baseball, I played with and against some older players who used to spend their off-seasons working in warehouses, as security guards, or in other odd jobs.

Baseball didn't pay them enough back then even to take the winter off. That had changed by the time I came along, but not as dramatically as you might think.

In my rookie year, 1986, I made $60,000. The next year I made $180,000. My third year it was $325,000. I had hit thirty home runs for three straight years; I'd even been a Rookie of the Year. Nowadays, if they came across that kind of talent, they would probably be happy to hand someone a ten-year, $100 million contract. But I didn't start earning really serious money until after I was the unanimous choice for the American League most valuable player in 1988, my 40-40 breakthrough year. The A's knew they would have to come through, and in June 1990 I signed a five-year deal with Oakland for a total of $23.5 million-at the time, the biggest contract ever for a baseball player. (Up to that point, the largest such contract had been for four years, $12 million.)

If you compare the baseball player of today with the players of twenty years ago, you'll find that now they are bigger, faster, and stronger. The reason for that is simple: Competition is fierce, the money is unbelievable, and a majority of the players have been using steroids. Today, you can get $5 million out of college. Organizations are willing to lock you up for five years after your first good year or two. Back then, you had to prove yourself, go through arbitration and free agency, just to make it at all.

Young players coming up today are looking at a completely different economic picture. Let's say you're a talented young player from an impoverished area of Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. And let's say you realize that, if you can put together back-to-back good seasons with strong home-run totals, you can realistically set up your family and yourself for the rest of your life with a $40 or $50 million contract.

There's only one catch: To score that big paycheck, to set up your family and become one of the richest people in your country or on your island, you're going to need to guarantee that performance-and the only way to ensure that is to make the most of the opportunity presented by steroids and growth hormone.

Put it that way, and I don't see any young kid turning it down.

Would you? Would you really?

We know so much more about steroids now than we did even a decade ago. Today is nothing like the 1970s, when those scientists in East Germany were experimenting on women swimmers and other athletes with huge doses of steroids, having no idea what they were doing or what would happen to the women.

Many of those East German swimmers have been left with major health problems, including giving birth to children with club feet and other defects. Worse yet, those women were never given a choice.

We've come a long way since then. We know enough now to be experts on the many ways of doing steroids properly, and supervising steroid use to make sure you're doing it safely. We have removed most of the question marks, and substituted reliable information about what to do and what not to do to achieve the result you want. I can't emphasize this enough: If you are going to use steroids, you have to use them properly. You can only use them under close supervision. You need to make sure you know what you're doing. This is nothing to mess around with: Steroids can hurt you, and I am the first one to say so. If you abuse steroids, they can be very harmful. That's why using them only in a careful, controlled way is so important. It takes education, personal discipline, and common sense. But if you've got all those things going for you, you never have to turn out like a Jason Giambi, or worse.

There are a lot of positive things about steroids and growth hormones that most people don't know. They were invented to help people with muscle growth and strength. There is obviously an advantage to athletes using steroids, especially in football, because football is a sport that emphasizes weight, mass, and speed, whereas in baseball, you need hand-eye coordination and quick-muscle-twitch fiber, depth perception, and so forth.