Alex Rodriguez admits using banned substances

By Bill Shaikin

Feb. 10, 2009 12 AM PT

He did not just do it once.

Alex Rodriguez admitted Monday that he used performance-enhancing substances for the three years before baseball initiated steroid tests in which violators would be identified and suspended.

“I was stupid for three years,” the New York Yankees’ Rodriguez told ESPN.

Two days after Sports Illustrated revealed that Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003, Rodriguez said he took performance-enhancing drugs upon joining the Texas Rangers in 2001, citing the “enormous amount of pressure” that accompanied his then-record $252-million contract with the club.

“I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time,” he said. “I did take a banned substance. And, for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”

Rodriguez’s admission was addressed by Barack Obama, who, during his first prime-time news conference as president, called it “depressing news” that tarnishes an entire era of baseball.

Although the admission does not subject Rodriguez to a suspension from baseball and probably does not subject him to legal charges, he has received an invitation from Congress to speak out against steroids.

Torii Hunter of the Angels watched Rodriguez’s televised admission and said Rodriguez could not have suffered in silence.

“A-Rod is the type of person who wants everyone to like him anyway,” Hunter said. “He can’t function with people thinking he might have taken steroids and might be continually lying. He wants it out of the way.

“I know it will be a dark cloud over him for a year or two, but he told the truth, and he hasn’t tested positive for anything since then.”

Rodriguez played three years in Texas, with the Rangers finishing in last place in the American League West each year. The Rangers’ roster during those years included several players linked to steroids, including Rafael Palmeiro and Ken Caminiti.

Palmeiro tested positive for steroids in 2005, when he played for the Baltimore Orioles. Caminiti, who died in 2004, admitted to using steroids.

Rodriguez, 33, said he did not know which substances he used during that period and would not say how he obtained them.

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

Baseball tested for steroids for the first time in 2003, during a survey in which players were promised anonymity. Rodriguez said he stopped using the drugs after an injury in 2003; baseball players first were subject to identification and suspension for positive tests in 2004.

Although steroid use without a valid medical prescription was illegal during the years Rodriguez said he used them, his admission should not subject him to legal trouble, said Mathew Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor with the law firm of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.

The government has focused its efforts on prosecuting drug distributors rather than users, with the exception of players who deny steroid use in the face of potentially conflicting evidence.

The government has charged Barry Bonds -- and is investigating whether to charge Roger Clemens -- not with drug use but with perjury, for allegedly lying by denying drug use under oath.

“Clemens brought on himself a grand jury investigation by going on ’60 Minutes’ and testifying under oath before Congress,” Rosengart said. “He forced the government’s hand.

“Rodriguez appears to have learned from Clemens’ mistake. By admitting his steroid use, he makes it very unlikely that he will be investigated or prosecuted. If anything, he will be seen as a cooperating witness rather than a subject or target of any investigation.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a member of the House committee that grilled Clemens last year and then referred him to the Justice Department for investigation, said he believes it would be a good idea for the committee staff to meet with Rodriguez and learn what he might be able to share about baseball’s steroid era.

“Mr. Rodriguez made the right move in admitting his mistake,” Cummings said, “and now he must go one step further by working with us to spread the message that performance-enhancing drugs are illegal, unethical and, most importantly, harmful to our young people.”

Cummings said he was “extremely concerned” about allegations that Gene Orza, the union’s chief operating officer, tipped Rodriguez to an upcoming drug test in 2004. Orza denied the allegations, made in the Sports Illustrated report, in e-mails to media outlets Monday.

“If it’s true and the circumstances are still present,” Cummings said, “it’s undermining everything we’ve been working toward.”

Rodriguez is the third All-Star player to admit using performance-enhancing drugs, joining slugger Jason Giambi and pitcher Andy Pettitte. Many others -- and before Monday, Rodriguez was among them -- have denied use.

It remained unclear Monday how Sports Illustrated obtained the test results for Rodriguez. The SI report identified Rodriguez as one of 104 players to test positive in 2003.

“I hate in my heart that he took steroids, but I forgive him,” Hunter said. “I’m upset that those names on the list came out. Someone dropped the ball. Those other 103 players, they might as well bring those names out too.

“If A-Rod’s name is out there, others should be.”

It also remained unclear which parties had access to those names. Government agents and lawyers are privy to that information, along with high-ranking executives of the players’ union.

The commissioner’s office briefly had access to that list of players testing positive. Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief labor negotiator, received the information but returned it on the basis it was confidential, said a baseball source who could not be identified because he is forbidden from speaking publicly on the subject.

In 2004, union officials informed players whose 2003 test results had been seized by the government, so it is possible that those players or their teammates might have spread word about a specific player, perhaps inadvertently.

In 2007, Jose Canseco said he could not believe that Sen. George Mitchell’s accounting of baseball’s steroid era did not include the name of Rodriguez.

“I included in my report only the names of players about whom I had received credible evidence of their illegal purchase, possession or use of performance-enhancing substances,” Mitchell said in a statement Monday. “I did not have access to the results of the 2003 drug testing, and to this day I do not know which players tested positive then.”

Major League Baseball did not comment on Rodriguez’s latest remarks. On Saturday, the commissioner’s office responded to SI’s original report by saying it could not comment because of confidentiality reasons.

In 2007, Joe Torre -- then Rodriguez’s manager with the New York Yankees and now the manager of the Dodgers -- expressed disappointment that Canseco planned to name Rodriguez in his second steroid expose.

“Unfortunately, when people see it in print, they add credence to it,” Torre told New York reporters then. “That’s the sad part about it.”

Torre told the Associated Press on Monday that he was “blindsided” by the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

“We all have to take blame for this,” Torre said. “I had never really heard anything in connection to him. When you watch his work ethic, the time he puts in at batting practice and in the weight room, I had no reason to question him.

“It’s going to be tough for him, but I’m happy that he came out, faced the music and took responsibility for it.”

Others weren’t as forgiving.

“He claims to be sorry that he used hard-core steroids, but it is obvious that he is only sorry that he got caught,” said U.S. Anti-Doping Agency spokesperson Erin Hannan. “If he was 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 when he claimed he had never used or considered using performance-enhancing drugs.”

Rodriguez said he hoped his acknowledgment of steroid use would not derail his chances for induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

“If you take a career of 25 years, and you take away three, or you take away 2 1/2 , or you take away one, I think overall you have to make a decision,” he said.

“It would be my dream to be in the Hall of Fame, and I hope one day I get in. But my biggest dreams now are to win a world championship and be the last team standing on the field.”

Rodriguez averaged 52 home runs in his three seasons in Texas, including a career-high 57 in 2002. He has averaged 39 in his other 10 full seasons, five each in Seattle and New York.

“He went to Yankee Stadium and hit 40-something,” Hunter said. “Everyone’s going to have more home runs in Arlington. That’s a bandbox.

“It’s not steroids that made him have more home runs. It’s the ballpark. Anybody can hit in Texas.”

Times staff writers Mike DiGiovanna and Lance Pugmire contributed to this report.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tainted numbers

Here’s a look at Alex Rodriguez’s numbers per 162 games from 2001-03 compared with his career numbers per 162 games without 2001-03 included. His numbers are almost the same, except for home runs and slugging percentage, both of which increase significantly from 2001-03:

2001-03

Runs... 127

Hits... 191

Doubles...30

Homers...52

RBIs...132

Avg.....305

On-base %... .391

Slugging %....615

REST OF CAREER

Runs...127

Hits...191