Giambi’s Long Road Back

Before he hit bottom last fall, Jason Giambi wondered if he would ever feel good again.

“There were a lot of times that I was going, ‘God, am I ever going to get better?’ ” he said.

At the center of baseball’s steroids furor, Giambi swiftly went from slugger to scrap heap, beset by an unlikely string of ailments that included inflamed knee tissue, a twisted ankle, a stomach virus, a strained groin, a respiratory infection, an intestinal parasite and a benign pituitary tumor.

After grand jury testimony in which he admitted using steroids became public, the 2000 American League MVP apologized -- but wouldn’t say what he was apologizing for, a news conference that invited ridicule. Then his average sunk so low this spring that the New York Yankees asked the five-time All-Star to consider going to the minor leagues, which he declined to do.

Giambi looked like Superman zapped by Kryptonite, a shrunken shell of his former self. He was vilified, used by some as a symbol for what they felt was wrong with baseball.

And then, just as suddenly, his bat came to life.

He was batting .195 with three homers and six RBIs on May 11 and had just five homers in the first three months of the season. But in July he hit .355 with 14 homers, the most for the Yankees in a single month since Mickey Mantle in July 1961, a performance that earned him AL player of the month honors Wednesday.

Giambi entered Thursday night’s game at Cleveland with a .284 average, 19 homers, 47 RBIs and a major league-leading .443 on-base percentage. He’s tied for eighth in the AL with a .548 slugging percentage, and his 60 walks rank third -- a sign that his batting eye is sharp and that pitchers are starting to fear him again.

“I didn’t live in the past. I didn’t live with the game before, like, oh God, I was 0-for-last night,” he said last weekend. “I tried to tell myself every day: Go hit in the cage, play the game. Even if I had struggled in that game, come back the next day: Today’s the day, it’s going to happen.”

His face, pale white in 2004, is flush with color again. His biceps are bulging, noticeably larger than during spring training -- but still smaller than they were when he joined the Yankees in 2002.

Dropped from the Yankees’ postseason roster last October, he went home to Las Vegas after they were eliminated by Boston and didn’t even try to work out for three weeks.

“I just felt sick. I just felt like I couldn’t function. I was dizzy all the time,” he recalled during spring training in a lengthy interview with Associated Press about his health. “I was a vegetable. I just wanted to sit in front of the TV or do nothing because I wasn’t functioning. I felt like I couldn’t do the normal things I’d do before.”

But around Thanksgiving, he felt strong enough to start weight lifting. He began to regain some of the weight he lost and his personal trainer, Bobby Alejo, came in a few days each week from Northern California to supervise workouts.

Giambi started running in January, doing agility drills on an indoor basketball court before he lifted, extending his workouts to five or six days each week. And around the start of February, he started hitting, first with tosses, then hitting off a tee.

He went to Yankee Stadium for his Feb. 10 news conference, twiddling his thumbs, crossing his legs and fidgeting in his chair as he said he was sorry five times and apologized three times. When he reported to spring training 11 days later, he was greeted by fans with cheers and outstretched pens, and he spent more than a half hour the first day signing autographs, part of the rehabilitation of his reputation.

But, ultimately, he had to justify the remaining four seasons of his $120 million, seven-year contract with his bat, not a ball point. And when his average sank below .200, criticism mounted.

“I think New York magnifies everything. There were some unfair things that happened to him,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “The expectations are so high because the money is so high. Any time you don’t do it, you’re a bum and you’re letting people down.”