Alex Rodriguez told ESPN on Monday that he did not know what performance-enhancing substances he took and hasn’t taken anything since 2003.
By TYLER KEPNER
Alex Rodriguez acknowledged Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers from 2001 to 2003, a confession that casts doubt on the achievements of the player widely considered to be the best in baseball.
The admission also makes Rodriguez, who joined the Yankees in 2004 and has 553 career home runs, the most prominent baseball player to admit that he has knowingly used illegal substances. Three other equally famous players — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire — are widely suspected of having used performance enhancers, and have become infamous for their denials. Rodriguez took the blame in a lengthy interview on ESPN.
“When I arrived at Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure,” Rodriguez told the interviewer, Peter Gammons. “I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day.
“Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naïve. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. I did take a banned substance, and for that I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”
Rodriguez maintained that he did not know precisely what substances he took and stressed that he has not used performance enhancers since joining the Yankees. His failed test came in 2003, the first year baseball tested for drugs. The testing that year was done on a survey basis, without any penalties, and the results were supposed to be anonymous.
But in April 2004, federal agents seized all of the positive urine samples from the 2003 testing as part of their investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. On Saturday, SI.com, the Web site of Sports Illustrated, reported that Rodriguez’s 2003 sample was seized.
Rodriguez said he stopped using performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 after sustaining a neck injury in spring training. As he lay in bed contemplating his baseball mortality, he said, he considered the possible long-term effects of steroids.
“I realized, ‘What am I doing? Not only am I going to hurt my baseball career, I’m going to hurt my post-career,’ ” Rodriguez said. “It was time to grow up, stop being selfish, stop being stupid and take control of whatever you’re ingesting. And for that I couldn’t feel more regret and feel more sorry, because I have so much respect for this game and the people that follow us. And I have millions of fans out there who won’t ever look at me the same.”
The careers of Bonds and Clemens have been similarly tarnished, though both differ from Rodriguez because of their denials. Bonds has been indicted on perjury charges stemming from his testimony before the Balco grand jury in 2003; Clemens is now under investigation for perjury in connection with his testimony before Congress last February.
At his first formal news conference Monday, President Obama called Rodriguez’s admission “depressing news” that tarnishes an era in baseball.
“What I’m pleased about is, Major League Baseball seems to finally be taking this seriously, to recognize how big of a problem this is for the sport, and that our kids hopefully are watching and saying: You know what? There are no shortcuts; that when you try to take shortcuts, you may end up tarnishing your entire career, and that your integrity’s not worth it,” Obama said.
Rodriguez is not subject to suspension by baseball, because he failed his test before punishments were enacted. Nor does he appear to be in any legal trouble. Baseball enacted drug-testing penalties in 2004, and since then, under guidelines that have been toughened several times, he has likely been tested at least seven times.
In this period, he has never been linked to a positive test.
Rodriguez averaged 52 homers a season with the Rangers, including his career high, 57, in 2002. As a Yankee, he has averaged 41.6 home runs a season, with a high of 54 in 2007. Rodriguez was named the American League’s most valuable player in 2003, 2005 and 2007.
Despite that success, Rodriguez has been a focal point for criticism and self-imposed drama. In previous springs with the Yankees, he has irritated Red Sox players by boasting about his workout routine and irked Derek Jeter by announcing they were no longer close friends. Those issues look tame now.
Rodriguez becomes the third Yankee in five years to apologize for using performance-enhancing drugs in February, when spring training begins. Jason Giambi apologized in 2005 and Andy Pettitte did so last spring. Yankees pitchers and catchers report to camp in Tampa, Fla., on Friday; Rodriguez reports with the position players on Feb. 17 in a scene that will test both him and his teammates.
“I’m glad he came clean,” the Yankees’ Johnny Damon said in a telephone interview. “Now he can go out and concentrate on baseball. He had some explaining to do and a lot to deal with, and as a teammate, I’m going to do what I can to try and help him get through a difficult time. I’m sure it’s going to be a rough year, but for us to win, we’re going to need him to be good.”
Tom Hicks, the Rangers owner who signed Rodriguez to a record $252 million contract in December 2000, was less forgiving. “I feel personally betrayed,” he told reporters on Monday in a conference call. “I feel deceived by Alex. He assured me he had too much respect for his own body to do that to himself.”
The Yankees are paying Rodriguez an average of $27.5 million per season through 2017, the highest salary in baseball. The contract also includes $30 million in bonuses tied to Rodriguez’s pursuit of Bonds’s record 762 home runs.
The assumption that a player with no link to drugs would ultimately break Bonds’s record led the Yankees to believe the chase would be a celebration, and a marketing bonanza, and helped convince them to give Rodriguez an enormous contract. Days after signing the deal in December 2007, Rodriguez told CBS’s Katie Couric that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs.
Rodriguez is hardly alone in lying to the news media about drug use. Giambi denied using steroids until the leak of his grand jury testimony in 2004, and Pettitte claimed to be clean of drug use until he was named in the Mitchell report in 2007.
Rodriguez said that Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players’ union, told him in 2004 that his 2003 test sample might have been among the 104 positives that had been seized by federal agents. Since nothing came of that warning, Rodriguez said, he assumed he had never taken anything that could be considered an illegal performance enhancer.
“In my mind, I assumed that whatever I was experimenting with in Texas, perhaps, was O.K., I’m O.K.,” Rodriguez said. “And in my mind, as I did my interview with CBS last year, I felt I haven’t failed a test, I haven’t done a steroid. And that was my belief. Whether I wanted to convince myself of that, that’s just where my mind was.”
Rodriguez saved his angriest comments for the Sports Illustrated senior writer Selena Roberts, who first reported the story. He accused Roberts of stalking him and trespassing. Roberts, who is writing a book on Rodriguez, said she did nothing wrong, adding, “What he’s inventing is just that, a fabrication.”
Rodriguez pledged to educate children on the ills of drug use, but McGwire did the same thing before Congress in 2005 and has lived in seclusion since. Even after his interview, Rodriguez’s sincerity was being questioned.
“He claims to be sorry that he used hard-core steroids, but it is obvious he is only sorry that he got caught,” Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said in an e-mail message.
“If he was truly sorry that he used, he would have admitted it in advance and would not have provided a stone-faced denial to Katie Couric and the American public in 2007,” Tygart added.
Rodriguez was evasive when Gammons asked how he was introduced to steroids and where he obtained them. He referred to needing an edge because of the heat in Texas.
“I got caught up in this ‘Everybody’s doing it’ era, so why not experiment with X, Y and Z?” Rodriguez said. “There’s absolutely no excuses and I feel deep regret for that.”
As for his chances of making the Hall of Fame, Rodriguez said he hoped voters would consider his entire career and not dwell on his years with the Rangers.
“It might take five years, it might take 10 years, it might never go away,” Rodriguez said. “But being honest is absolutely the only thing for me to do today.”Original here
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