Alex Rodriguez admits drug use

Already the highest-paid player, Alex Rodriguez wanted to prove himself one of the greatest. Instead, he wound up atop another list: the highest-profile player to confess to cheating in baseball’s steroids era.

The All-Star third baseman, responding to a weekend Sports Illustrated report that he flunked a drug test, told ESPN on Monday he used banned substances while playing with the Texas Rangers from 2001-03 to justify his 10-year, $252 million contract.

“Back then, it was a different culture,” Rodriguez said. “It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive, and I wanted to prove to everyone that, you know, I was worth, you know — and being one of the greatest players of all time.”

He said he didn’t do it before that and quit during spring training in 2003, before the first of three American League MVP seasons, because “I’ve proved to myself and to everyone that I don’t need any of that.” He was traded to the New York Yankees before the 2004 season and said he hasn’t used banned substances since.

The admission came two days after Sports Illustrated reported on its Web site that Rodriguez was among 104 names on a list of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003, when testing was intended to determine the extent of steroid use in baseball. The results weren’t subject to discipline and were supposed to remain anonymous.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. 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,” Rodriguez said.

“And I did take a banned substance and, you know, for that I’m very sorry and deeply regretful. And although it was the culture back then and Major League Baseball overall was very — I just feel that — You know, I’m just sorry. I’m sorry for that time. I’m sorry to fans. I’m sorry for my fans in Texas. It wasn’t until then that I ever thought about substance of any kind.”

Rodriguez said part of the reason he started using drugs was the heat in Texas.

“Can I have an edge just to get out there and play every day?” he said to himself. “You basically end up trusting the wrong people. You end up, you know, not being very careful about what you’re ingesting.”

Though Rodriguez said he experimented with a number of substances, he never provided details.

“It was such a loosey-goosey era. I’m guilty for a lot of things. I’m guilty for being negligent, naive, not asking all the right questions,” Rodriguez said. “And to be quite honest, I don’t know exactly what substance I was guilty of using.”

Owner feels ‘betrayed’

SI reported Rodriguez tested positive for Primobolan and testosterone.

He said he stopped using during spring training 2003, when he sustained a neck injury. It was just as baseball started its drug-testing survey.

Rangers owner Tom Hicks said the admission caught him by surprise.

“I feel personally betrayed. I feel deceived by Alex,” Hicks said in a conference call. “He assured me that he had far too much respect for his own body to ever do that to himself. … I certainly don’t believe that if he’s now admitting that he started using when he came to the Texas Rangers, why should I believe that it didn’t start before he came to the Texas Rangers?”

During those three seasons, Rodriguez averaged 161.7 games, 52 homers, 131.7 RBIs and a .615 slugging percentage. In the other 10 full seasons of his career, he averaged 149.2 games, 39.2 homers, 119 RBIs, and a .574 slugging percentage, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

“This is three years I’m not proud of,” Rodriguez said.

The 33-year-old Rodriguez ranks 12th on the career list with 553 homers, including 52, 57 and 47 in his three seasons with the Rangers. He is 209 behind Barry Bonds’ record 762.

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who sits on the House committee that brought Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and other baseball players to Capitol Hill in recent years, favored a congressional hearing with Rodriguez.

“It would be good perhaps for us to sit down and talk to him,” Cummings said in a telephone interview. “I would think that he would want to cooperate with us so that the Congress would have the information it may need.”

Rodriguez’s admission was in stark contrast to the denials of Bonds and of Clemens, Rodriguez’s former Yankees teammate.

Bonds, a seven-time MVP, is scheduled for trial next month on charges that he lied when he told a federal grand jury in 2003 that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. Another federal grand jury is considering whether to indict seven-time AL Cy Young Award winner Clemens on charges he lied when he told a congressional committee last year that he never used steroids or human growth hormone.

Questions remain

Rather than hold a news conference, as Giambi and Pettitte did for their confessionals, Rodriguez chose the controlled setting of an interview with ESPN, one of Major League Baseball’s television partners.

The interview left open many questions:

• From whom did Rodriguez obtain drugs?
• How did he pay for them?
• Did anyone help him obtain them?

“You have nutritionists, you have doctors, you have trainers. That’s the right question today: Where did you get it? We’re in the era of BALCO,” Rodriguez said. “There’s many things that you can take that are banned substances. I mean, there’s things that have been removed from GNC today that would trigger a positive test.”

Monday’s ESPN interview directly contradicted a December 2007 interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” when Rodriguez said “No” when asked if he had ever used steroids, human growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing substance.

“I wasn’t even being truthful with myself,” he said Monday. “Today, I’m here to tell the truth.”

In his 2008 book, “Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball,” Jose Canseco claimed he introduced Rodriguez to a steroids dealer. Canseco, who has admitted using steroids, subsequently said he had no knowledge of any drug use by Rodriguez.

“They are looking in the wrong places,” Canseco said in a text message to The Associated Press. “This is a 25-year cover-up. The true criminals are Gene Orza, (union head) Donald Fehr and (commissioner) Bud (Selig). Investigate them, and you will have all the answers.”

SI said that Orza, the union’s chief operating officer, tipped off three players in September 2004 that they would be tested. Orza repeatedly has denied that he tipped off players, saying he merely reminded them late in the season that if they had not yet been tested, baseball’s drug agreement required them to be tested by the end of the regular season.

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Source: Ledger Enquirer