Juiced (20 page)

By now, the players had grown bolder than ever talking about their dosages among themselves. They would trade little details constantly-from injection angles to how to dump your syringes after using them. This was no small thing: It's a felony to carry a needle. Most players just slipped them back into their bags until they'd saved up six or eight of them, and then got rid of them all at once.

I think the players knew better than to dump syringes where they lived. We'd find strategic ways to dispose of them somehow-in Dumpsters or out-of-the-way trash bins. I'm not sure about the other players, but I was always very careful to wipe my fingerprints off the syringes, just in case there was a reporter nosing around, pulling out syringes and wondering, "Hey, who does this belong to?"

Sometimes, you just gave your used syringes to the clubhouse attendants, who would put them all in a bag and toss them out with the regular garbage. That's how easy it was like throwing away the big, greasy bag after a visit to Burger King. You didn't want someone to spot you out near a Dumpster, even driving by in your car, because especially someone like me, six foot four, 250, is going to tend to be recognized: "Hey, there's Jose Canseco! What's he doing over there next to that Dumpster?"

That constant awareness of reporters coming in to the clubhouse, and the need to put away your stash, was what made it so laughable in 1998, when this so called controversy erupted over McGwire and androstenedione. A lot of people assumed that Steroid Summer, the McGwire-Sosa Show, and the Fake Controversy over Andro?

because Mark McGwire was always shy and awkward talking to people-especially to reporters and other media types-he was kind of dumb. But just because Mark is quiet doesn't mean he's not s m a r t . . . and to my mind the whole androstenedione controversy showed just how clever he is.

Try to think about the question for a minute without jumping to conclusions, the way everyone did back then. Mark had been suspected of using steroids for a long, long time. Nobody ever came out and said it in the media, the way that they had about me, because Mark was a white golden boy. Given all that, Mark must have been worried about when his luck would run out and his protected status would change. He couldn't have helped wondering whether the roof would come down on him, and everyone would know how much steroids had to do with his success in baseball. He was a very private person to start with; the idea of being unmasked must have eaten away at him.

Think what it must have been like for him. The summer of 1998 was like a movie starring Mark and Sammy, and I'm sure Mark wanted to protect himself in case anyone decided to try to go public with what every player in baseball knew: that McGwire was juiced. So here's what I think he did: He left a bottle of andro in his locker, where he knew a reporter would see it, and write about it. That's just what happened, and it was a big distraction. You even had politicians in Washington, D.C., like Arizona Senator John McCain, calling for andro to be controlled.

But this is where you need to stop and think. Androstenedione is a temporary testosterone booster. It boosts your own testosterone level for about an hour, and then the effect goes away. Use it right before a workout, and it may give you a little pick-me-up. It may make your workout a little more intense.

But an hour later, the effect is gone. Steroids, on the other hand, stay in your system for six to eight months at a time.

Mark was an experienced steroid user, as I know firsthand. His physique speaks for itself. And he knows as well as I do that if you're taking steroids, you don't need androstenedione. McGwire using andro would have been like a hospital patient on morphine asking for an aspirin. It just doesn't make any sense.

The andro story may have been a ploy, but if so it sure was clever. There were two big advantages for Mark in having his name associated with andro. One, it was a distraction from the real issue, which was steroids: "Oh, he's taking this other thing, and he got it over the counter. No wonder he's so strong." That was enough to keep the media occupied that season, when he hit seventy homers. Two, if he'd ever been required to take a steroid test, and he failed, it would have been easy for him to say: That was just the andro. I didn't do anything illegal.

Here's what I think: I don't believe Mark McGwire was even taking andro. Why would he? That bottle of andro was just sitting in his locker; that doesn't mean he actually used it. To me, it seems more likely that the whole thing was an illusion. I'm virtually certain that Mark created the andro controversy as a distraction.

The one surprising thing was how well the setup worked.

19. The Godfather of Steroids

Jose Canseco was the Typhoid Mary of steroids.
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ANANONYMOUS AGENT

he owners are going to be criticized for their complicity in the steroid revolution, but should they be? It all depends how you look at it. They knew they needed to take strong measures if they were going to re-ignite interest in their dying multimillion-dollar industry. And they may not have been aware of every last injection each of their players made.

But the owners knew something was afoot. They could see it in the long list of shattered records, and in the long parade of ripped-and-cut athletes they employed. Plenty of trainers knew much, much more-I know that because I told them myself.

And the Major League Players Association knew what was going on, there's no doubt in my mind. But up to that point steroid use had been common without necessarily being widespread. It was only after the strike that you saw everything starting to blow way out of proportion.

And it didn't take an expert to recognize what was happening.

Here's one case everyone was puzzling over: Brady Anderson hit thirteen home runs over the course of the whole 1993 season. The next year he finished with twelve; the year after that he was up to sixteen. Over the course of three seasons, he squeaked out a mere forty-one homers; it was clear to everyone what kind of hitter he was-a leadoff guy with a little bit of pop, not much more than that.

Then what happened? In 1996, he came back and hit an even fifty home runs.

Was he using steroids? I never saw him inject himself, but he and I discussed steroids many times. And consider this: How else could someone go from hitting a total of forty-one home runs over three seasons to cranking out fifty in one, without a major boost from steroids? The following year, Brady was back down to eighteen homers for the season; the year after that, he finished with the same number. Was it a fluke? Or, as Jim Palmer has suggested, was Anderson's '96 season influenced by steroid use? You be the judge.

(And while we're at it, let me put to rest is this whole notion that the huge increase in home runs we've seen in recent years can be explained by higher compression baseballs. I think we all know that it's the players who were juiced, not the balls. Sure, there were other factors besides steroids-Major League Baseball now uses better bats, made of stronger wood, than it used to, and I'm sure that has made a contribution to the home-run totals. But mostly it had to do with having stronger, more consistent hitters, with quicker reflexes, who were able to maintain that strength throughout an entire season.)

You can ask Brady Anderson about the advice I gave him. For that matter, you can ask plenty of players the same questionand if you find one who's willing to be honest, they'll confirm it for you. I was the player who made it acceptable for others to do steroids-because after a while it was clear the owners were leaving the door open for me to educate them, no questions asked.

I never minded helping others get bigger and stronger, even though I knew that someday I might be competing with some of these same guys for a spot on a team. I enjoyed helping them tap their own potential to try to become better players. You may wonder why I would share my secret weapon so openly.

Looking back, I don't think it was entirely selfless: The truth is that I never really had the greatest self-confidence, and I think I was always trying to help people, in a quest to win their approval. Even after I reached the big leagues, after all, I was still a pretty quiet and shy guy. Of course, that wasn't always the picture you got from the media. When you come into some money as a famous athlete, it's easy for people to develop an attitude about you, and there are an awful lot of reporters out there who called me arrogant. And yet I think most people who met me and talked to me came away saying, "Oh, he's just a big teddy bear."

The steroid strategy worked great for baseball, at least for a few years. But then what happened? The owners became victims of their own success. They brought baseball back, but the new excitement over the game had the inevitable effect. Salaries climbed up and up and up, to monstrous new levels. With it came the constant threat that the players' open secret about steroids would be exposed. And that was when they decided to change tactics.

That was when they told me, in effect: Go away and be quiet.

We don't want you.

The owners realized that they needed to put the kibosh on steroid use, or at least pretend to. So they decided to send a loud message to all players, by getting rid of the player most closely identified with steroids: Jose Canseco. I was only thirty-eight home runs short of five hundred for my career, but at thirty-seven years old, I was out of the game. I could have been the worst player in the world and still hit those last thirty-eight home runs before my time was up. But they took that chance away from me, because they wanted to send the world a message that steroids had gotten out of control. They made an example of me. The players all knew it. And when I confronted Donald Fehr with my problem, he did nothing about it.

The baseball industry needed to cover its tracks, and that meant shutting me up. I knew way too much about the inner workings of the steroid era. I knew it had gotten to the point where a number of team trainers, weight-lifting coaches, and other on-field medical personnel were able to recommend specific steroid programs to major-league players. I was friends with some of these personnel, and we'd discussed a variety of issues concerning steroids and what using steroids can do for an athlete. I explained to them how their players could benefit, especially players who were on the disabled list.

The disabled list, or DL, was the key to the whole thing. Obviously it costs an organization money when a player is on the disabled list, especially if he's a great athlete who earns what great athletes earn. As salaries have exploded, many teams have had to carry ever-higher costs to pay their star players to sit out with injuries. So it has become a major concern for teams: How do you get them off the DL more quickly?

It's the trainers' job to get these players healthy and back in the lineup as fast as possible. I spoke about that challenge with more than a few of them, in detail, and they agreed that what I said made a lot of sense.

"Listen, what happens if all these players say they want to do steroids?" I asked them. "What are you going to do about it?"

"We don't really know," they said.

Did any of these trainers ever discuss what they were doing with the owners? I don't know. But as the years went on the word spread, and the owners and the union both fought hard to keep testing out of baseball. The message seemed clear: If the players were finding ways to pump up their bodies, enhance their performance-and inject life into the game while they were at it-nobody was going to lift a finger to complain.

As soon as the trainers I talked to started getting involved, the steroid floodgates burst. The players started doing them right there in the locker room, so openly that absolutely everybody knew what was happening. It was so open, the trainers would jokingly call the steroid injections "B12 shots," and soon the players had picked up on that little code name, too. You'd hear them saying it out loud in front of each other: "I need to go in and get a B12 shot," a player would say, and everyone would laugh. (Of course, that was the kind of joke you really only made around other steroid users, because obviously they were in the same boat as you. What were they going to do, tell on you? Not hardly.)

They weren't talking about vitamins or supplements, of course, but about a combination of steroids-in most cases Deca and some form of testosterone. I never used the term myself, because I was mixing up my own stuff and didn't need any trainer's help. That would have been like a master chef walking into McDonald's and ordering a Big Mac to taste the special sauce. The funny part is, there might have been a few players who didn't even know what was in the shots they were getting. I never pulled any of them aside and asked, "Did you know he's injecting you with steroids?" I just assumed they all knew, but looking back, I'm not so sure. There may have been a few who were so out of it that they weren't even aware of what was going on. You'd have to ask them about that yourself.

It was the pitchers who really kept that "B12" joke going. For example, I've never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he never told me that he did. But we've talked about what steroids could do for you, in which combinations, and I've heard him use the phrase "B12 shot" with respect to others.

A lot of pitchers did steroids to keep up with hitters. If everyone else was getting stronger and faster, then you wanted to get stronger and faster, too. If you were a pitcher, and the hitters were all getting stronger, that made your job that much more difficult. Roger used to talk about that a lot.

"You hitters are so darn strong from steroids," he'd say.

"Yeah, but you pitchers are taking it, too. You're just taking different types," I'd respond.

And sometimes Roger would vent his frustration over the hits even the lesser players were starting to get off of good pitchers.

"Damn, that little guy hit it off the end of the bat and almost drove it to the wall," he would say. He would complain about guys who were hitting fifty homers when they had no business hitting thirty. It was becoming more difficult for pitchers all the time, he would complain.