Juiced (25 page)

Even after everything I've explained in this book, I understand that some people are going to act like those hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys, holding their hands over their ears or their eyes or their mouths. But are steroids really evil? No, they aren't. What is evil, the way I see it, is willful ignorance, or even worse-and even more widespread-the behavior of those who knew just what was going on with steroids in baseball but pretended they didn't know. They pretended they weren't involved, even though, as we all know now, nearly everyone was complicit. To me, the real question is how long people persisted in sweeping the truth under the rug, instead of facing the public directly with the facts.

I'm not talking about any one person here. No one person is ever in charge of anything, not even the United States of America. A president needs Congress if he wants to get any laws passed. He needs to deal with the Supreme Court and the judicial system. Presidents share power in other ways, too, the way George W. Bush has with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

It's no different with Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball. The real power in baseball is dispersed among a whole host of owners-many of whom apparently weren't inclined to challenge the players on their steroid use, which was pumping up their bodies and their home run totals. And then later, as it became more of a public controversy, they decided together that they would deal with the potential scandal by denying everything and stalling for more time.

This book will make it much more difficult for them to deny it all much longer-at least it will if people start thinking for themselves, especially the sportswriters and broadcasters out there who knew all along that this was going on, but never found a way to report on it.

I don't have any videotape footage of me poking Mark McGwire in the butt with a needle. But this is my challenge: I'll take a lie detector test on the subject in a minute, and I'll pass with a perfect score. To you media types out there who want to attack me, the way the media has always attacked me, I say: Bring it on. Take your best shot. Try to change the subject and turn this into a debate about Jose Canseco, the big Cuban flake.

If that's the only way you can distract people from the fact that for years you've pretended not to notice the steroid revolution, so be it.

But if you think I'm a bad guy because I used steroids and spread the word about them, then what does that say about all of you? How many of you have tracked down Mark McGwire, since his retirement, and asked him direct and straightforward questions? Who has taken a look at him and how much weight he's lost since he was a player? Pretty hard to figure that one out, eh? Once protected, always protected.

So other than McGwire, and Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro in Texas, what more can I tell you about players and steroids?

WILSON ALVAREZ

Later in my career, when I was playing in Tampa Bay, I educated the left-handed pitcher Wilson Alvarez on steroids and growth hormone, and from time to time I would inject him, usually in some isolated nook in the stadium. He had a problem with his weight, and he asked me to help him do something about that. So I tried to inform him on getting growth hormones, which can cut fat, and I put him on a lean cycle of steroids. He actually did pretty well on that regimen and lost some weight-in contrast to players like Giambi, who bulked

DAVE MARTINEZ

Another teammate of mine in Tampa Bay was Dave Martinez, born in New York City, who was originally drafted by the Chicago Cubs. Dave has also played for the Montreal Expos, the Cincinnati Reds, the San Francisco Giants, and a bunch of other teams, including the Devil Rays. People who assume that only sluggers take steroids ought to look at some pictures of Dave, who was only five foot ten and 175 pounds. He played most of his career in the outfield.

Like so many others, Dave approached me about steroids.

He's a nice guy, and I was glad to help him out. I injected him the first few times, just to ease him into it, since he was a little jumpy getting an injection like that. Nobody wants a needle stuck in them, but other than Dave, they were all pretty good about it. I'm a good injector.

I taught Dave enough that he could continue on his own, but I don't really know whether he maintained the program or not; we weren't teammates for that long, and I didn't get a chance to monitor him over a period of time, the way I did some guys. But Dave Martinez is a good example of how even a player no one would ever suspect of using steroids did just that-maybe not seriously, maybe not for a long time, but more than once and purely of his own volition.

BRET BOONE

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."

Whispers like that were a sign that you were part of the club-the bond of a secret code or handshake. You were united by this shared knowledge, and the experience of unlocking so much more of your body's natural potential. Still, though, sometimes you just had to laugh-and it was that way with Bret Boone. Sure enough, Bret used his hulking new body to go crazy that season. He practically doubled a lot of his numbers. He went from nineteen homers to thirty-seven that year, and from eighteen doubles the previous season to thirty-seven that year.

He had 141 RBIs, after nine years in which he'd never broken ninety-five in a season. That alone should have been enough to tell you what was going on, but the reporters covering Bret might as well have been sitting up in the pressbox with their hands over their eyes.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist named David Andriesen actually wrote in May 2002: "Speculation was quiet and infrequent, though, and we never asked Boone last year whether his performance was steroid-fueled. Aside from the numbers, there was no reason for suspicion, and we never saw a hint of tough-to-hide side effects commonly seen in steroid users."

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Like a lot of reporters with very little knowledge about steroids, and no practical experience whatsoever, this guy got caught up in the whole side-effects distraction. In fact, if you use them properly, as I've mentioned, the side effects usually aren't a problem.

The amazing thing was how obvious it was: All they had to do was open their eyes and take a look at this little guy, with his small frame and his huge arms-arms that were bigger than mine! His great season that year just goes to show you how a new set of muscles can help an athlete. And those financial rewards weren't far behind: Based on his performance in 2001, Boone went from making $3.25 million to pulling down $8 million a year.

Who wouldn't want a $4.75 million raise? Who wouldn't be willing to take some small risks for that kind of cash?

If I told you I'd pay you that kind of money to swim across a lake filled with crocodiles, chances are probably even or better that you'd take the chance. But what's riskier? Steroids or the damn crocodiles?

The crocodiles, if you ask me. By a mile.

TONY SAUNDERS

One truly sad case was Tony Saunders, a left-handed pitcher who was my teammate in Tampa Bay during the 1999 season. I tried to talk to him. I really did. He was about six foot two, but when he got going with steroids he just kept getting bigger and bigger, until he looked like a bodybuilder.

"Listen, you've got to dose that stuff down," I told him; as a pitcher he needed a leaner, sleeker physique. And he agreed. He complained to me that the growth hormone and other chemicals he'd been taking had made his body too big, too tight.

But he didn't change his program-and a terrible thing happened. That May, he was pitching in a game against the Texas Rangers, and his arm just snapped. It was awful. He broke the humerus bone, from the elbow to the shoulder, and that ended his career. It's impossible to know whether steroids were responsible for compromising his bone density-it may be that he just didn't know his own strength.

When I see things like that, I just shake my head in sadness.

Some people just don't understand the power they're working with. They get so carried away wanting to get bigger-but baseball's not about bigger. Baseball is about flexibility and longevity. It's about recuperation time, maintaining a psychological edge, and stamina. If anything gives you stamina, it's the proper mix of steroids done the proper way-not heavy steroids, which can bulk you up, slow you d o w n . . . or stop you altogether.

If people want to think of using steroids as cheating-even with the whole baseball industry in on it-that's fine with me.

But if that's how people are going to talk about steroids, they should at least keep in mind that baseball players, like anyone involved in a highly competitive activity, have always looked for ways to gain an advantage. They have always pushed the boundaries of what is fair and unfair, what is cheating and what is just being clever.

Remember Gaylord Perry's mean old spitball? That extended his career for years.

Or how about corked bats? There have always been players willing to use a bat that's been filled with cork to give it a little more spring. I remember talking once with Albert Belle about corked bats. Belle was a strong man, and it was all natural; he was one of the very few superstars of that era who never used steroids, as far as I know. But sometimes he did like to swing a corked bat in a game.

"Albert, man, you've got to hide bats like that," I told him. "You know, you're going to get caught if you don't."

He gave me one of those fierce Albert looks that people were always misunderstanding. "But everybody's using them," he said. "I might as well use one."

But I think Albert was exaggerating. A lot of us never used corked bats, and never wanted to. For me, they never worked because my bats were so darn heavy-thirty-five or thirty-six ounces. (The one time I swung a corked bat-just for fun, in batting practice-I cracked the head of it.) McGwire never even swung a corked bat, I guarantee it. He had corked biceps. Why would he need a corked bat?

There are plenty of little secrets like that in baseball, things that most fans don't even know about-until someone gets caught, the way Sammy Sosa did for using a corked bat in June 2003. When Sammy's bat broke during a game, home-plate umpire Tim McClelland decided to make an issue of finding a little cork among the pieces.

To me, though, the corked-bat controversy was just another instance of what I've been saying all along: If that had been a different player, I guarantee that the umpire would have covered it up. Umps cover that stuff up all the time if they like the player.

If it had been an untouchable, a McGwire or a Ripken, then forget about it-there's no way any ump would have made an issue of it. But it was Sammy Sosa. And the whole thing got blown out of proportion, until it became international news.

Sammy didn't deserve that.

25. The Future of the Game

I love playing baseball, but sometimes I feel like the
gorilla in the zoo. People watch the gorilla, stare at it,
point at it, trying to figure out why it's doing what
it's doing.
-
JOSE CANSECO,
October 2, 1989

One thing that always puzzled me was when people used to claim that somehow I didn't love baseball enough, or didn't respect the game enough. That's the kind of thing I heard every so often from outsiders and media people-but never from other players.

Baseball is the best game in the world.

Believe me, I care about the game; I busted my ass for it. I played through three back surgeries. I played through elbow surgery. If you play a power game, the way I did, you're going to have some injuries; that's only natural. But I always tried to play to the best of my abilities. I always worked to honor the game.

I never sat out with a minor injury or anything like that. That's another thing people don't really recognize. They don't know what it's like to have to go out and stand up straight so you can hit more home runs after three back surgeries. That's what I did-not just for my career, but for the fans, and for the game. No game in the world can match baseball, in its pure form. But as a sport, organized baseball has its problems. Sure, the owners turned a blind eye to the steroid revolution because they felt they had to do something to save the game. And, sure, I can't stand their hypocrisy in claiming ignorance. But steroids are not the problem with baseball. No, the real problem is: Baseball doesn't know how to sell itself to people. The people involved don't seem to care about giving the fans what they want.

Even to this day, I have a big following among fans. They remember the excitement I generated back when I was MVP-the forty-forty man who dated Madonna and kept the headlines coming. There was always a buzz of interest around me. Whether it was during batting practice or during the game, I created a stir wherever I was.

I know all this sounds immodest, but I'm not trying to blow my own horn here. My point isn't that I was the world's best player. The point is that I was an entertainer, I knew it, and I never had a problem with it. I've always considered myself that way; I've always told the media: We're all entertainers, or should be, anyway.

Besides Bo Jackson, who came along the year after I did, there were no athletes my size that could perform the way I could.

That just wasn't how baseball players were built. There was no one who could run as fast as I could run. I remember racing Rickey Henderson and beating him constantly. "I'm not going to race you any more," he told me. "I'm embarrassed to let a guy your size beat me." Rickey was one of the fastest guys in baseball-yet despite a forty- or fifty-pound weight difference, I was actually faster than he was. Besides Bo Jackson, I was hands down the biggest, fastest guy in baseball. The fans knew it, and they loved it. It brought more excitement to the game.