Apology Is Offered in Bulk
Jason Giambi said Thursday he was sorry.
He left a winter of accusations, walked into Yankee Stadium again, sat beside his manager, general manager and agent, and did not deny or confirm that he had stoked his baseball career with illegal steroids.
His eyes wide and his beard half-grown, his body appearing sturdier than when anyone had last seen him in October, Giambi spoke of atonement in an uncertain future, presumably with the Yankees, and before a suspicious public.
Ducking frequently behind what he called “ongoing legal matters,” Giambi refused to reveal the grounds for his apologies, though he freely identified for whom they were intended.
“I know there’s been a lot of distractions over the past year and I wanted to apologize for all those distractions from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “I take full responsibility for it and I’m sorry. Most of all, I feel like I let down the fans. I feel like I let down the media. I feel I let down the Yankees. I feel I let down my teammates. So, I apologize for that, but I’m a man and I accept full responsibility.”
For lack of harder evidence elsewhere, Giambi has become the embodiment of steroids in baseball.
While Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield reportedly hedged in their testimonies to a federal grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative’s distribution of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, Giambi reportedly confessed to using steroids over a period of several years.
He avoided specific questions about steroids Thursday, and never uttered the word in two news conferences, one for print media and the other for television and radio.
Giambi probably was abiding to a grand-jury secrecy law that forbids him to talk about a case, and perhaps was heeding the advice of a criminal lawyer, said Mark Werksman, a former federal prosecutor and now a Los Angeles defense lawyer.
“His lawyer may have told him not to say a word,” Werksman said. “That’s plausible. I’ve told clients to tell everybody you can’t talk. You don’t have to tell them why.”
Though he claimed not to have read the San Francisco Chronicle article that the newspaper said detailed his testimony, or any of the follow-up stories, Giambi said, “The one thing I’ll tell you is that when I went in front of the grand jury I told the truth.”
According to the Chronicle, Giambi told the grand jury he injected human growth hormone and testosterone, that he had used designer steroids, known as “the clear” and “the cream,” and had taken pills designed to maximize or mask the drugs. The injections, he reportedly said, were made in his stomach and buttocks.
Giambi was one of about 25 athletes called to testify in the federal government’s investigation of BALCO, based in Burlingame, Calif. He also is tied to steroid use in an upcoming book by former Oakland Athletic teammate Jose Canseco, according to reports, in which Mark McGwire and several other major league players also are implicated.
Canseco reportedly claims he, McGwire and Giambi injected each other in a clubhouse bathroom. Giambi disputed that account.
“I find that delusional, to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t even know where he would come up with anything like that. I think it’s kind of sad that ‘Josie’ is that desperate, I think, to make a dime.”
Giambi addressed the media on a gray afternoon in New York in an effort to soften his landing in spring training next week. At 34, Giambi has four years and $85 million remaining on his Yankee contract.
He is coming off his worst professional season, in which he batted .208 with 12 home runs and 40 runs batted in in 80 games, endured a benign tumor in his pituitary gland and a parasite, and was left off the postseason roster.
Early in the off-season, the Chronicle reported his leaked grand-jury testimony, along with that of his brother, Jeremy, and that of Bonds and Sheffield. The story landed about nine months after Giambi showed up in spring training startlingly thinner than he’d been in recent seasons, weight loss that coincided with baseball’s testing for steroids.
He claimed then there was no connection, that he’d simply gotten off fast-food hamburgers. He was not as flippant Thursday, but did not come clean, either.
“Everything’s back to normal,” he said. “I had a pituitary tumor. We took care of that, we got it all under control, and I’m fine. So, I’m working out two times a day and just going forward.”
While exploring methods to rid themselves of Giambi’s contract, the Yankees found leaked grand-jury testimony probably would be insufficient grounds. So they signed Tino Martinez to play first base, owner George Steinbrenner met with Giambi last month, and the organization waited to see what Giambi would look like come spring training.
“I think we’re all curious to see how he’s going to rebound from everything he went through last year,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre told Associated Press. “He certainly looks better than he did.”
It is a start, apparently.
“One of the biggest conversations I had with Mr. Steinbrenner is that I’m not a quitter,” Giambi said. “I know it’s going to be tough and I know it’s going to be a long road, but I’m going to do the best I can. That’s why I’ve been working my butt off, started hitting earlier than I ever have. I started throwing, running earlier than I ever have, just to get back to [being that] player.”
He hit 82 home runs and drove in 229 runs in his first two seasons with the Yankees. In 2000, while still with the A’s, he was the American League MVP. Returning to those numbers and that stature, Giambi said, would amount to a long way back, and over decisions he made for himself. And only then, perhaps, could he work toward regaining a place in the Yankee community.
“I’m a good person,” he said. “You guys know me as a good person. But the biggest thing is, I accept full responsibility for it and that’s why I’m here talking to you guys.
“Like I said, I know it’s going to be a long haul and a long road. I’m willing to make that journey. And I want everybody to remember me as a guy who faced my problems. I didn’t run from them. And I’m trying to overcome them.”