Risk, Reward, & Steroids
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Inquiry Sheds Light on Baseball’s World of Steroids
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
The New York Times
April 12, 2009
When an All-Star third baseman needed help recovering from a shoulder injury, he knew from one of his agents whom to call: a doctor who mailed him steroids and syringes without ever seeing him.
A journeyman catcher, fearing he would not be able to support his wife and children if he lost his spot in the major leagues, reached out to the same doctor.
A pitcher who was feeling worn down followed the same path, but another pitcher who was plagued by fatigue found an alternative: he said a team doctor injected him with steroids.
The players’ accounts, from previously undisclosed evidence related to a federal investigation of a California doctor, shed light on how pervasive steroids were in baseball from 2000 to 2004 — a time when league executives and union officials were arguing whether the use of performance-enhancing drugs was widespread enough to justify testing.
The accounts offer rare insight into why players took banned substances and depict an environment in which information about steroids was readily shared among players, agents and doctors.
Even after Major League Baseball and its players union bowed to pressure and started a testing program in 2003, the All-Star third baseman — Troy Glaus of the Anaheim Angels — and the worn-down pitcher — his teammate Scott Schoeneweis — said they continued using steroids. (Steroids had been banned in baseball since 1991, but there was no way to enforce the ban until 2003.)
Glaus said he was “willing to take the risk” because he needed to play, according to a report written by the federal agent who interviewed him. Schoeneweis said he knew when players were tested because he was his team’s union representative, according to the report, though Schoeneweis said in an interview last month that the agent misinterpreted him. A basic tenet of effective drug testing is that the element of surprise is essential.
The accounts of Glaus, Schoeneweis, catcher Todd Greene and pitcher Ismael Valdez were written by federal agents who interviewed the players as they gathered evidence in the case of Ramon Scruggs, an anti-aging doctor who was indicted last year on charges that he illegally wrote prescriptions for steroids and human growth hormone to the players, business executives, police officers and others.
A lawyer affiliated with the doctor’s case was given much of the evidence by federal prosecutors and allowed a reporter for The New York Times to review the documents on the condition he not be identified.
Glaus, Schoeneweis and Valdez were named in connection with a 2007 investigation into an Internet-based pharmacy as receiving shipments of performance-enhancing drugs; Greene had never been identified as using steroids.
Scruggs, 62, no longer has a medical license and said his lawyer was negotiating a plea agreement. Nevertheless, he is unapologetic about the players’ use of steroids.
“These players benefited from restoration, not performance enhancement,” Scruggs said in a telephone interview. “Steroids don’t make someone a good athlete or a bad athlete; they may make you stronger, but they don’t make you a better athlete.”
Baseball has toughened its drug-testing program several times since the program started in 2003, and officials point to the low number of positive tests — only three in 2008 — as proof that drug use has been curtailed. In fact, one Scruggs client, a backup outfielder named Jorge Piedra, become the second major league player suspended after baseball imposed suspensions for first-time offenders in 2005.
Still, skeptics wonder whether players have found new ways to cheat — suspicions fueled by revelations like Alex Rodriguez’s admissionin February that he used steroids from 2001 to 2003.
An Injury for Glaus
It was in 2003 that Glaus, a four-time All-Star and the most valuable player of the 2002 World Series, went on the disabled list for the first time in his career. He injured his right shoulder while trying to field a bunt in July and a month later received a diagnosis of a partly torn rotator cuff and fraying labrum. He missed the rest of the season.
Frustrated with his rehabilitation, Glaus contacted Scruggs, whose only request was for a blood sample to see whether Glaus’s testosterone levels were low enough to warrant a prescription for steroids. Medical files seized from Scruggs’s office show the steroids were sent before Scruggs reviewed Glaus’s blood test.
Asked by the investigators whether he was concerned that Scruggs did not ask to see him, Glaus was quoted in the report as saying: “I just wanted to get better, it didn’t alarm me. I just wanted to get better and play.”
In a phone interview, Scruggs acknowledged he often dealt with patients via telephone: “That may seem terrible, but that’s how it is. I have caught things in hours with people on the phone that other doctors wouldn’t catch.”
It was also through phone calls that Scruggs taught Glaus how to inject himself, according to the investigators’ report.
Starting in November 2003 and for the next three months, Glaus injected himself once every four days with the steroids nandrolone and testosterone, the investigators say he told them.
“It worked, and I was getting better,” Glaus is quoted saying.
Glaus and Greene testified before a federal grand jury that they were referred to Scruggs by their agents, Mike Nicotera and Gene Casaleggio, according to people with knowledge of the testimony who insisted on anonymity because the information was sealed by a court order.
Nicotera and Casaleggio are the senior partners for the Sparta Group of Parsippany, N.J., and their Web site says they represent roughly two dozen current and former major league players and about the same number of minor leaguers.
Nicotera and Casaleggio did not respond to several telephone and e-mail messages and other attempts to reach them.
Greene, who is now a quality control coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the federal prosecutors in California. Glaus did not respond to a message left with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Union Is Scrutinized
Scruggs began working with Schoeneweis after the 2002 season. Schoeneweis told Scruggs he had little energy after playing exhibition games in Japan following the Angels’ World Series victory. Scruggs prescribed steroids.
Once the testing program began, though, Schoeneweis was concerned about getting in trouble, the investigators wrote.
“Schoeneweis stated that he only used steroids one time during the season, and because he was a player representative, he knew when players got tested,” their report says.
The notion that union officials tipped off players to tests in the first two years of the program has been raised several times before, including in the Mitchell report.
Schoeneweis, a 10-year veteran now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, said in an interview during spring training that he was simply stating that all players knew they were going to be tested in 2003. He said he never received advance notice about a test.
“Player reps know the information to tell the rest of the players union, the rest of the body and the league,” Schoeneweis said. “We were knowledgeable ahead of time about what the testing program was going to be because we were negotiating it, O.K.? That’s it.”
Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players union, said in a statement that player representatives had never been told when particular players would be tested.
Greene said that he contacted Scruggs in 2001 because “he felt he was at a critical point in his career and, being married and having two kids, he was concerned that he would not be able to make a living playing baseball,” according to a report from an interview authorities conducted with him in 2005.
There was a buzz about Scruggs’s name at the Texas Rangers’ spring training facility when Valdez, the pitcher, arrived after signing as a free agent before the 2002 season.
Valdez told the investigators he had pain in his shoulder and knee, and contacted Scruggs, who mailed him syringes filled with steroids.
Valdez told the investigators he already had experience with steroids; he said a doctor with the Angels injected him with testosterone in 2001.
“Valdez said the Anaheim Angels doctor told him that his testosterone levels were low,” the federal agents wrote in their report. The report did not specify the doctor who injected Valdez.
Tim Mead, a spokesman for the Angels, said in an e-mail message that team doctors never prescribed or injected players with performance-enhancing drugs.
Marc Carlos, a lawyer for Valdez, said in a phone interview that he would review his notes from Valdez’s meeting with authorities and call a reporter back. Afterward, he did not return several telephone messages.
Valdez may indeed have had low levels of testosterone, a condition that afflicts an estimated 1 in 250 men between ages 25 and 35, but low levels of testosterone can also be a symptom of steroid use.
Documents seized from Scruggs’s office showed that Valdez was already using a veterinary steroid he had obtained from Mexico when he contacted Scruggs.
Valdez had struggled from 2000 to 2002, compiling a 19-34 record.
After contacting Scruggs, he rebounded in 2003 and 2004, when he went 22-17. In 2005, he was injured and pitched in only 14 games, and he has not pitched in the majors since.
Ups and Downs
Glaus’s career also rebounded.
In an MLB.com article published in January 2004, Nicotera, the agent, lauded Glaus’s rehabilitation, saying: “In the long run, I think this injury was a blessing in disguise for Troy. He is in the best shape of his life right now.”
Nicotera added, “He also got himself a little more educated on nutrition.”
Through the first 29 games of the 2004 season, Glaus led the American League with 11 home runs.
But his right shoulder betrayed him again. On May 21, he had surgery to repair his labrum and rotator cuff and turned to Scruggs.
“Glaus said that he said he only had one chance to ‘get it right’ and continued on the same prescriptions he had previously,” the investigative documents say.
“Glaus admitted that he knew it was ‘illegal in the game,’ but the bottom line was he needed to play and wanted to play baseball,” the document says.
Twelve players tested positive that year — the second for the program — but it is not known if Glaus was among them because one-time offenders remained anonymous.
Glaus said he stopped using steroids at the end of August 2004. He returned to the lineup for the final 29 games and hit seven home runs, then he hit two more in the Angels’ three-game loss to the Boston Red Sox in the A.L. division series.
That December, he signed the largest contract of his career, a four-year, $45 million deal with the Diamondbacks.
He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in 2006 and made the All-Star team again. Before last season, he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals and hit 27 homers with 99 runs batted in.
But his shoulder problem flared and, in January, Glaus again underwent surgery. After a setback during rehabilitation, he is expected to miss the first two months of this season.
-Joshua Robinson contributed reporting from New Jersey, Thayer Evans from Tucson, and Alan Schwarz from Florida. Toby Lyles contributed research.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company |
