So the latest PED bombshell implicates Alex Rodriguez, among others, and once again exposes the absolute absurdity of attempting to regulate the actions of adults in a free society:
…. The name that really made Garcia’s jaw drop was hometown hero Alex Rodriguez.
Born and raised in Miami and starring on the diamond since he was 18 years old, A-Rod admitted in 2009 that he had used steroids, claiming in an ESPN
interview that his doping was limited to a three-year window — 2001 through 2003 — while he played under a record contract for the Texas Rangers. Ever since then, A-Rod claimed, he’d been playing clean. He’d never failed an MLB drug test since penalties were put into place.
Yet there was his name, over and over again, logged as either “Alex Rodriguez,” “Alex Rod,” or his nickname at the clinic, “Cacique,” a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief. Rodriguez’s name appears 16 times throughout the records New Times reviewed.
Take, for instance, one patient list from Bosch’s 2009 personal notebook. It charts more than 50 clients and notes whether they received their drugs by delivery or in the office, how much they paid, and what they were taking.
There, at number seven on the list, is Alex Rodriguez. He paid $3,500, Bosch notes. Below that, he writes, “1.5/1.5 HGH (sports perf.) creams test., glut., MIC, supplement, sports perf. Diet.” HGH, of course, is banned in baseball, as are testosterone creams.
That’s not the only damning evidence against A-Rod, though. Another
document from the files, a loose sheet with a header from the 19th Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging and Aesthetic Medicine, lays out a full regimen under the name Cacique: “Test. cream… troches prior to workout… and GHRP… IGF-1… pink cream.”
IGF-1 is a banned substance in baseball that stimulates insulin production and muscle growth. Elsewhere in his notebook, Bosch spells out that his “troches,” a type of drug lozenge, include 15 percent testosterone; pink cream, he writes, is a complex formula that also includes testosterone. GHRP is a substance that releases growth hormones.
There’s more evidence. On a 2009 client list, near A-Rod’s name, is that of Yuri Sucart, who paid Bosch $500 for a weeklong supply of HGH. Sucart is famous to anyone who has followed baseball’s steroid scandal. Soon after A-Rod’s admission, the slugger admitted that Sucart — his cousin and close friend — was the mule who provided the superstar his drugs. In 2009, the same year this notebook was written, Sucart (who lives in South Miami and didn’t respond to a message left at his home) was banned from all Yankees facilities.
The mentions of Rodriguez begin in 2009 and continue all the way through last season. Take a page in another notebook, which is labeled “2012″ and looks to have been written last spring. Under the heading “A-Rod/Cacique,” Bosch writes, “He is paid through April 30th. He will owe May 1 $4,000… I need to see him between April 13-19, deliver troches, pink cream, and… May meds. Has three weeks of Sub-Q (as of April).”
I’d suggest that A-Rod is well on his way to being suspended, as this evidence is fairly detailed and quite damning. Of course, he’s already expected to miss the first half of the season after his hip surgery, so maybe Brian Cashman already knew something was up when he suggested that A-Rod might miss the whole season….
Hat Tip to Baseball Musings.
UPDATE: Verducci waited all of two seconds to jump on the work of another sportswriter:
…. Rodriguez’s career never has been in more doubt than it is today. His health and reputation are in tatters. He turns 38 in July. The incentives the Yankees included in his contract for “milestone” home runs now stand as even more awkward reminders that his achievements are fraudulent.
What will become of him? The Yankees would wish he never puts on their uniform again, writing him and his contract off to the insurance companies or, if they have the stomach for it, to try to invalidate the agreement because of his use of PEDs, the way they once threatened to do with Jason Giambi. Rodriguez must give a full accounting of himself and this report to Selig and, quickly, to baseball fans. You can see Oprah, Katie Couric and Dr. Phil already lined up at his doorstep for the next sports confessional.
There you go. Thanks to Verducci, A-Rod knows what to do next. Run to Tom Verducci, and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to him and Lupica, so he and Mike can protect all the baseball fans who are “hurt” by these allegations. Thanks, Tom.
“Headlines are treated as facts, details are quashed or ignored, and reason languishes in the gutter.”
Never have the actions of the mindless masses been better described.
I wonder at what point proven non-PED users will get pilloried for not trying hard enough.
During this last Hall of Fame balloting the most frequently cited concern was performance enhancing drugs. Regarding the issue of players’ using PED’s, we see confidential test results, confidential medical records, and even grand jury testimony, leaked to the press on a disturbingly regular basis. The files obtained by the Miami NewTimes News is just the most recent example of confidential records illegally obtained and published.
Publishing illegally obtained confidential records and subjecting the individuals named in those records to a trial in the court of public opinion is apparently A-Okay, ethically, in the minds of the fourth estate. Others might see this as flaunting the rights of individuals under the fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing freedom from illegal search, the benefit of due process, and protection from self incrimination.
So we have people committing criminal acts; medical records are protected by law, as is the confidentiality of grand jury testimony. Then we have the press publishing these confidential documents for profit, which is – at best – ethically questionable behavior. Finally we have the players, who are being publicly demonized without benefit of due process.
This raises the questions: How are the baseball writers even remotely qualified to act as judges of the character of the players? Shouldn’t it be the writers and their criminal associates who are under investigation?
It is beyond me, far beyond me, to understand how messed up our country has become. Money talks, as always, but now, it talks in a way that it perhaps never has before. The internet seems to be a forum for multiple views to be expressed, but in the end, the sportswriters, because of their vastly larger audiences, make a bigger point, and their opinions weigh more.
I try and fail to educate my friends and family all the time, and find myself shouted down again and again. Headlines are treated as facts, details are quashed or ignored, and reason languishes in the gutter.
The mob rules. Led by Lupica, Verducci, and the rest of these moralizers. It’s so disheartening.