A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (17 page)

With the right steroids, in the right clubhouse, Alex met that expectation.

Chapter Seven

THE “B-12” CODE

From the first day of spring training for the 2001 season, it was clear to his Rangers teammates that Alex Rodriguez wasn’t even going to pretend to be a calloused, good-ole- boy Texas rough-neck. The inside of his large designer duffel, often lugged by a clubhouse attendant, looked more like a woman’s carry-on: Clinique scrub for his face, emery boards for his nails, skin lotions, dental fl oss, hair products, lip balm and a self-help book.

The beauty products refl ected Alex’s “Look good, feel good”

philosophy and dovetailed with an obsession about what he put into his body. He rarely drank alcohol, did not eat fried foods or sweets— preferring skinless broiled chicken and vegetables— and chugged down protein powders, supplements and vitamin packs to increase his fi tness, sculpt his body and boost his energy. He would soon fi nd that the Rangers clubhouse offered plenty of other ways to
help him look good, feel good and crush baseballs. It was a virtual pharmacy for players, full of performance enhancers. There, on the shelves of lockers and sometimes stacked on the fl oor, sharing space with shoes, fan letters and batting gloves, were FedEx boxes stuffed with unmarked packages of syringes, steroids and growth hormone.

This doping culture had been prevalent in Texas ever since 1993, when Jose Canseco had been traded there from Oakland.

Rafael Palmeiro, Pudge Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez had all been avid students in Canseco’s graduate seminar on steroids. They would frequently duck into a bathroom stall or a video room and inject each other with Deca, Winstrol and testosterone, combin-ing water-based and oil-based steroids to create the desired effect: power and, just as important, confi dence.

Steroids weren’t exclusive to the Rangers— there were sirens going off all around the league, though no one wanted to heed them— but this team had many of the most profl igate abusers. In 1993, Texas led the American League in home runs and in Mr.

Universe physiques. Canseco played in Arlington for only a couple of years, but his impact lasted a decade. The Rangers became an offensive juggernaut, putting up astonishing power numbers. The question wasn’t “What’s in the water in Texas?” but “What’s in the bag?”

Some major-league players have estimated that up to 50 percent of their teammates were on steroids from 1998 to 2003. The number might have been higher for the Rangers. Dressing next to Alex in that clubhouse were many players who would be tied to steroids, including Palmeiro, Gonzalez, Pudge Rodriguez, Randy Velarde and former NL MVP Ken Caminiti. More resolute than remorseful, Caminiti fi rst talked publicly about his use of steroids with
Sports Illustrated
in 2002. He laid out the doping self-justifi cation of many players when he said, “Look at all the money in the game. You have a chance to set your family up, to get your daughter into a better school. So I can’t say, ‘Don’t do it,’ not when
the guy next to you is as big as a house and he’s going to take your job and make the money.”

Most players trust few people outside their inner circle. And Alex was no different. He spent most of his time with childhood friends— such as Gui Socarras and Yuri Sucart— and his girlfriend, Cynthia. Teammates say he purposely isolated himself because he was using steroids. “He didn’t let people in,” says one former Ranger. “He didn’t want anyone to know— especially Hicks.” In the Rangers clubhouse, Alex mostly hung out with the same crew, often speaking in Spanish with Palmeiro and Pudge. They would talk baseball, family and, in more cryptic tones, doping. “They didn’t say anything in the open— they weren’t telling the world or anything,” says the former Ranger. “But when you hear ‘B-12,’ you hear it.”

A “B-12 shot” was known as the code for an injection of steroids.

Some nights during the 2001 season, scoreboards seemed as if they would overheat from the barrage of hits and runs the Rangers put on them. Of the league-high 246 homers the Rangers hit in 2001, 47 came off the bat of the 36-year- old Palmeiro and a stunning 52

were launched by the 26-year- old Alex Rodriguez. “I think Alex is the kind of guy motivated not by the money but by putting up the best numbers he can put up,” said Bill Haselman, his former Rangers teammate. “I think he wants to be the home-run king of all time.”

Alex joined Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ralph Kiner and Jimmie Foxx— all Hall of Famers— in hitting 50 home runs at such a young age. “At times, I forget how young I am, because I’ve been playing for so long,” Alex said.

It might have only seemed so long because the Rangers were so bad. All those hits didn’t translate into wins; the team had a league-worst 5.71 ERA and fi nished last in its division, with a 73–89 record. The
Los Angeles Times
said A-Rod “[played] out a season for the ages in virtual obscurity.”

In the papers and on
SportsCenter
, he was also being buried by Barry. In 2001, Bonds hit a single-season record 73 homers, breaking Mark McGwire’s mark set just three seasons earlier. Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki lit up Japan and America with his running swing, which he used to lead the league with a .350 batting average.

Far from the national spotlight, Alex not only pounded balls over the fence but also had a .318 average and 135 RBIs. It was one of the greatest offensive seasons ever for a shortstop, and for what?

To fi nish 43 games behind his old team, the Seattle Mariners?

Just one year into his monumental 10-year deal, and the Rangers were already looking like a mistake for A-Rod. Attendance was sagging, and television ratings were plunging. Someone had to take the fall: Hicks fi red General Manager Doug Melvin and hired John Hart. “I think the landscape is littered with train wrecks that have never made the postseason,” Hart said when he took the job, “clubs that are in large markets and have fl oundered around and never had a clear path. We are not going to become one of those train wrecks.”

In October 2001, Hart was at the end of a successful 10-year run as the respected and dashing general manager of the Cleveland Indians. Before the season began, he announced that it would be his last with the team. Time for new blood.

The Indians gave him a nice send-off, winning the American League Central title. Juan Gonzalez, two years removed from his glory days in Texas, was in the midst of an astounding revival: He hit .325 with 35 homers and a team-high 140 RB. He fi nished fi fth in MVP balloting.
The team’s fi nal regular-season road trip ended in Toronto, where, three weeks after 9/11, airport security was especially tight.

All bags, whether from commercial or charter planes, were scrutinized by the Canadian Border Ser vice. As reported by the New York
Daily News
, agents noticed that an unidentifi ed gym bag had come off the Indians’ charter fl ight. Wary, they unzipped the bag and discovered fi ve ampoules of anabolic steroids, pills contain-ing the adrenergic agonist clenbuterol, and hypodermic needles.

Agents alerted Toronto police and called Indians executives, who were checking in at the Westin Harbour Castle hotel. Canadian of-fi cials then stepped back and waited to see who claimed the bag.

A short time later, a member of Gonzalez’s entourage picked it up. When questioned by Toronto police, he said it belonged to a man who worked for Gonzalez: Angel Presinal, a 48-year- old trainer who had built an almost mystical reputation in the Dominican Republic for his healing touch with injured athletes. He worked with the D.R.’s national boxing and basketball teams but was better known for his involvement with some of baseball’s greatest players, including David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Tejada. He was also on Gonzalez’s payroll. Presinal made most of his living off bonuses, such as the $50,000 he received from Gonzalez after his client was voted MVP in 1996.

Presinal arrived in Toronto that day on a later fl ight, and Canadian border agents were there to greet him at the team hotel, along with Cleveland’s security chief, Jim Davidson. Presinal told Davidson the bag and its contents belonged to Gonzalez; he claimed he had packed the steroids for Gonzalez and had come to Toronto to help him administer them— a task he said he had performed many times for high-profi le players.

The authorities then talked to Gonzalez, who had a different story: he said he had no idea who had packed the bag or what it contained. Both men were questioned for hours, but offi cials
could never determine who owned the bag. “I didn’t do anything [wrong],” Presinal would claim years later. Canadian authorities fi nally confi scated the bag and released Gonzalez and Presinal.

MLB offi cials were livid— and frustrated— when they learned of the Toronto bag incident. They were increasingly sensitive to the growing suspicions about steroid use by many of the top sluggers, but with the Players Association resisting every effort to devise a policy for testing, there was little they could do to a player caught with steroids. MLB could go after the enablers, though. Before the 2002 season, Rob Manfred, the executive vice president of Major League Baseball, banned Presinal from every major-league ballpark. All clubs were notifi ed and sent a description of the muscle-bound trainer.

Hart never disciplined Gonzalez, and a few weeks after the incident, the GM left the Indians behind and settled into his new job with the Rangers. Unlike the other GMs, Hart didn’t need a picture of Presinal. He knew his face well.

Hart had a busy off-season in Arlington. Rodriguez leveraged his close relationship with Hicks to weigh in on personnel moves. He knew the Rangers needed more pitching, not more hitting, and Hart tried to please him by signing Chan Ho Park, Ismael Valdes and Todd Van Poppel. In an effort to shake up what he perceived to be a complacent team, he brought in some notorious misfi ts with problematic baggage of a different sort: He signed Carl Everett despite the hotheaded outfi elder’s feuds with management in Boston; he signed the closer John Rocker, even though the former Brave had insulted almost every minority in New York with a homopho-bic, race-baiting rant in
Sports Illustrated
in 2000; and he brought Juan Gonzalez back to Texas. Apparently Hart wasn’t put off by Gonzalez’s bad attitude, his bad back or his blatant connection to steroids.
The new slogan for these new Rangers was “America’s game.

Your team.” Based on the rampant use of steroids by some members of this group, the marketing department might have considered labeling them “The Dirty Dozen.”

Despite his major-league ban, Angel Presinal was busier than ever. He was working with Gonzalez, and he had picked up another big-name client in 2001: Alex Rodriguez.

They’d met on one of Alex’s many off-season trips to the D. R.

They quickly formed a close bond, with Presinal working on Alex’s strength and conditioning. The Rangers weren’t especially concerned about steroids. They rewarded Gonzalez with a nice contract and turned their heads when a doctor from the players’

union showed up at their spring training facility and was seen pulling players aside and lecturing them on how to use steroids safely, as one player says. John Rocker confi rmed the same scene in a 2008

radio interview. Rocker described how the union doctor had told them, “If you do it responsibly, it’s not going to hurt you.” The reliever says there had been just three players in this personalized how-to session: himself, Rafael Palmeiro and Alex Rodriguez.

The union was especially protective of Alex and knew of his relationship with Presinal. The Players Association did not interfere. Alex’s image as the game’s one true thing was important to many people. This included a league that craved an embraceable star to one day take the place of the serially surly Barry Bonds as the all-time home-run leader; a union empowered by Alex’s record-breaking deal; and the agent Scott Boras, who, with A-Rod as his trophy, was validated as the planet’s best deal maker.

“In an entertainment industry, there are good guys and bad guys,” says former Ranger Carl Everett, who was branded as a vil-lain by the media and will point out that A-Rod was ejected from more Texas games than he was. “Alex was the shining star. He’s baseball’s darling.”
Boras was also the union’s precious ally. In the backdrop, in sync with his longtime friend Gene Orza, the union’s COO, Boras was a quiet force behind the Players Association’s resistance to steroid testing. His biggest client— the most important player in baseball— was on them. As one player describes it, “You can’t have a guy sign for $250 million and him hit 26 homers. Then the deal is shit. C’mon now, Boras was the bagman and Alex was the bag.

[Orza] had both their backs.”

A major-league player says union offi cials enabled the steroid era two ways: fi rst, by declaring war on testing and dismissing the hazards of steroids; and second, by warning players not to purchase steroids in the United States in an effort to avoid authorities.

Alex knew every trick, but he was still sloppy about hiding his associations with steroid suspects. Repercussions seemed to escape his logic. Or maybe he felt protected from them by his handlers.

There are sign-in sheets in front of MLB clubhouses where security attendants require anyone not employed by the team to sign in. On several of these sheets from the 2002 season, the name Angel Presinal was listed on the docket. He fl outed the ban. His star clients ignored it, too.

Far from being concerned about Presinal, the Rangers did what they could to make his job easier. They regularly reserved— though did not pay for— a room for him during Texas road trips.

From 2001 through 2003, Presinal trained Alex at home, on the road and even in a chartered plane. One former Ranger described him as a “gnat by Alex’s side.”

When MLB offi cials learned that Presinal had been at The Ballpark in Arlington and the stadium in Anaheim, they ordered him removed. No matter. He worked in the shadows, seen by his players but not by MLB offi cials. Alex never skipped a beat.
The Ballpark in Arlington was built in 1994 as a kitschy hom-age to the American pastime— a popular conceit at the time. The same year The Ballpark was under construction, Disney was building a planned and canned town called Celebration, Florida, which was supposed to be an ode to the sock hop era, complete with a town square with old movie marquees on its theaters and chirp-ing bluebird sounds pumped through loudspeakers near an old-fashioned soda shop. The Ballpark in Arlington was just as phony.