Bulking Up a Battered Reputation

When Jason Giambi was a baby, his dad put a toy bat in his crib. Later, the father installed a batting cage and a pitching machine in the backyard.

John Giambi, a Mickey Mantle fan and onetime junior college catcher, tutored Jason on his swing -- just as Mantle was tutored by his father. Jason wore No. 7, Mantle’s number. The elder Giambi intended to make his son a switch-hitter, like Mantle. But Jason, who batted left-handed, wouldn’t go for it.

That wasn’t the only difference between the boy and the legend. Mantle was compact and powerfully built. Jason was tall and gangly. In high school, friends called him “Gumby,” after the spindly, bendable toy. He put the nickname on the license plate of his pickup.

At South Hills High School in West Covina, he excelled at football and basketball, but baseball was his passion. He lacked speed on the basepaths and finesse with the glove, but he took his father’s words to heart: “If you swing the bat, they’ll find a place for you to play.”

He polished his swing, drilling himself to focus on the top half of the ball -- a technique that caused line drives to jump off his bat.

“He didn’t have a lot of power,” said Aaron Small, a high school teammate who became a journeyman major league pitcher, “but he had a great swing.”

That sweet stroke, paired with outsized ambition, propelled Giambi to the big leagues. After several solid seasons, he exploded into stardom. Previously a doubles hitter, he began to launch home runs in bunches.

It wasn’t only his batting statistics that became conspicuous. In 1995, his rookie season with the Oakland A’s, the 6-foot-2 Giambi weighed 200 pounds. Three years later, “Gumby” was a ripped 235. He won a most-valuable-player award and signed a $120-million contract with the New York Yankees.

Then, three months ago, a secret from his past caught up with him. In grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, Giambi admitted that his prowess was not all natural.

He had always wanted to be liked. Now, he was vilified as a cheat. He had cherished his stature within the game, his good name. Now, it was shorthand for scandal.

In baseball more than any other sport, statistics tell the story of a player’s career, distinguish greatness from mediocrity. Giambi’s batting numbers set him apart. But a question hangs over all his accomplishments:

How much of that was him, and how much was the steroids?

Confident and Sensitive

Giambi, the eldest of three siblings, grew up in a 1950s ranch house in a baseball-mad suburb east of Los Angeles.

In high school, he was well-mannered and confident. He was also “very sensitive,” recalled Jim Bastion, his baseball coach at South Hills. “He likes people to like him.” Giambi’s eyes filled with tears once when a teammate called him the coach’s pet.

Giambi had a wild side too. He and his younger brother, Jeremy, liked to bike through storm drains and jump from the roof of their home into the swimming pool.

On a baseball diamond, though, Jason was all business.

He had excellent hand-eye coordination, an essential, unteachable ingredient in batting success.

By his sophomore year, he was on the Huskies’ varsity, where he pitched and played shortstop and second base.

Giambi was not the most talented player he’d coached, Bastion said. But he may have been the most driven.

Somewhere along the way, Jason had adopted his father’s dream as his own. The two of them were a team. When Bastion wanted something corrected, he would tell both Jason and John Giambi, president of a San Dimas bank.

“If push came to shove, there was only one person Jason would listen to -- his dad,” Bastion said. “John lives with every at-bat of Jason.”

During a 1989 California Interscholastic Federation playoff game at Mission Viejo, Giambi, then a senior, hit two home runs over a cluster of eucalyptus trees 330 feet away in right field.

The display surprised Bastion. Giambi was not a power hitter then. “He rose to the occasion,” the coach said.

That year, Giambi was named to the CIF All-Southern Section team in basketball and baseball. But he didn’t attract much interest from college or pro baseball scouts. His lack of speed marked him for first base, the least demanding defensive position. But he didn’t have the slugging numbers expected of a first baseman.

“As a kid, [Giambi] was an unbelievable player who didn’t get any recognition,” said Shawn Wooten, a high school teammate who later played first base for the Angels. “But nobody gave him a chance.”

‘Special Abilities’

Giambi planned to go to Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, where his father had played. But Dave Snow, baseball coach at Cal State Long Beach, heard that South Hills had a talented senior. After seeing Giambi play in a summer league game, he offered him a partial scholarship.

“You sensed this guy had special abilities, especially as a hitter,” Snow recalled. “Basically, he took every at-bat personally.”

It was Giambi’s only offer from a four-year college, and it was from a baseball powerhouse. He didn’t hesitate.

Giambi, a freshman, and Don Barbara, a senior and Long Beach’s leading hitter, used to talk about their dreams. Giambi said he intended to make it to the big leagues and win a World Series.

“He wasn’t cocky, just very secure. He knew he was going to do it,” recalled Barbara, now the hitting coach at Long Beach. “He wanted to do something great.”

In 1990, Giambi batted .422 and was named Big West Conference freshman of the year. The next season, he was an All-Big West selection on a team that reached the College World Series.

In 1992, Oakland selected him in the second round of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft. He spent two years in the minor leagues, playing in Modesto; Huntsville, Ala.; and Tacoma, Wash.

His parents were often in the stands. His father even placed Jason’s bat orders for him -- Louisville Sluggers.

Jason wasn’t flashy, but he was determined.

“He’s your coal miner,” said Ted Polakowski, director of minor league operations for the A’s, “a guy who goes to work and gets the job done.”

Good-Natured Rookie

Giambi reached the big leagues in May 1995. The 24-year-old rookie -- earnest, quiet, good-natured -- wouldn’t speak to the Oakland veterans unless spoken to.

Knowing no one in the Bay Area, he started dropping by Ron Simms’ custom motorcycle shop in Hayward. He had always wanted a Harley, and Simms’ shop was known among bike buffs. If Simms was short-handed, Giambi helped out. When Giambi said he was looking for a place to live, Simms offered a bedroom with a fireplace in his spacious home.

“He’s one of the nicest guys in the world,” Simms said.

Giambi and his father went to check out the room. They asked about paying rent, and Simms laughed, saying he didn’t need money.

“Of course, I didn’t know it would be for seven years,” said Simms, who also loaned Giambi a Ferrari and told him to leave his ratty Toyota pickup back in Southern California.

Giambi’s parents visited regularly and stayed with Simms. Jeanne Giambi apologized for her son’s messy habits and cleaned his room. To Simms, the Giambis were like the Cleavers, the All-American clan on “Leave It to Beaver.”

Giambi was disarmingly likable and guileless. “There’s an innocence about him that you can’t fake,” said A.J. Hinch, a former Oakland teammate.

He was also intensely ambitious. This mix of qualities provided little armor against the temptations that pervaded baseball clubhouses in the 1990s. The use of steroids had turned the game into what Sports Illustrated called “a pharmacological trade show.”

Steroids are synthetic hormones that help build muscle mass and stamina. They are potent, and risky. Possible side effects include tumors and heart disease. It is illegal to use them except under a doctor’s supervision.

The spread of steroids coincided with an unprecedented assault on baseball’s slugging records. In 1998, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a single-season record with 70 home runs. Three years later, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants smashed 73.

“If you said in 1993 that someone would hit 70 home runs, players would have laughed -- that’s how much it’s changed,” said Brent Gates, a former Oakland second baseman. “If you want to make the money, you need the numbers. If you guarantee a guy $20 million to hit 10 home runs, I don’t think steroids would be an issue. But if you are expected to hit 50 home runs, you better be strong and you better be big.”

In Giambi’s early days, the once-mighty A’s were a last-place team. McGwire, then with Oakland and one of the team’s few stars, took Giambi under his wing. The two lifted weights together.

“Mark has been everything to me, from mentor to big brother to everything else,” Giambi once said.

Jose Canseco, a former Oakland teammate, has alleged that McGwire fueled his power surge with steroids. McGwire, now retired, has denied the allegation.

He has, however, acknowledged using androstenedione, a substance that turns into testosterone in the body. Androstenedione, permitted in the major leagues when McGwire used it, has since been banned.

Canseco, who detailed his own steroid use in a recently released book, also alleged that Giambi used steroids under McGwire’s tutelage. He said he saw the two players give one another injections .

Giambi has dismissed Canseco’s account as “delusional.” He and McGwire declined to be interviewed for this story.

Assuming a New Role

In 1997, the A’s traded McGwire and other veterans, trying to create a winning team with a modest payroll. The immediate result was that the A’s got even worse. They won 65 games that year, lost 97 and attracted fewer fans than any other team.

“These kids were learning the big leagues in the big leagues,” said Hinch. “It formed a fraternity of guys who really cared about each other.”

The clubhouse became Animal House. Before games, players took remote-control cars out on the field or watched action comedies on the clubhouse TV. When the team managed to win, the stereo was cranked up high.

Giambi, nicknamed G, took over for McGwire at first base and slid into a new role: team leader. Fans saw him not as the son of banker, but as a blue-collar Joe who liked babes and bikes and pro wrestling. He wore his hair long and his beard stubbly. He sported muscle shirts that showed off his tattoos.

He drove a Harley, a purple Lamborghini, Simms’ red Ferrari or a black convertible Porsche. Giambi summed up his philosophy this way: “Play like an All-Star, party like a rock star” and have sex “like a porn star.”

Giambi went out of his way to make rookies feel welcome. He also bucked up teammates who were down. In a game against the Cleveland Indians, Hinch misplayed a bunt, allowing a crucial run to score. Afterward, the catcher had his head buried in his locker when Giambi tapped his shoulder.

“This ought to make you feel better,” Giambi said, handing him a Mountain Dew. Hinch remembered being surprised that Giambi knew his favorite soda.

On the field, Giambi was in the midst of a transformation -- from spray hitter to slugger. In each of his first two full seasons in the majors, he had hit 20 home runs. In 1999, he hit 33.

“He’d be in there lifting weights when I got there and he’d be lifting weights when I left,” said Aaron Small, his high school teammate, who pitched three seasons for Oakland.

But others suspected that there was more to his regimen than pumping iron. Izzy Molina, Giambi’s roommate in the minors and a teammate in Oakland, said he believed Giambi was using steroids.

“He was just gaining weight. You could see his muscle definition,” Molina said. “Every year, he gained more weight and more power.”

Award, and a New Team

In 2000, to Giambi’s delight, the A’s acquired his brother Jeremy, a utility player, from the Kansas City Royals. The two lived together, critiqued each other’s swings and hung out on the road. Jason, then earning more than $3 million a year, bought a five-bedroom home in Claremont for their parents.

Fans besieged him, and he always obliged with autographs, friends say. He met his wife, Kristian, at a P.F. Chang’s restaurant in Walnut Creek after being beckoned by her 90-year-old grandmother, an A’s enthusiast.

Then, improbably, the bargain-basement A’s made it to the playoffs. Giambi, at 29, was named the American League’s most valuable player after hitting 43 home runs and posting a .333 batting average. He gave his teammates signed commemorative bats with the inscription: “Thanks for your help during the run.”

He gave Bastion, his high school coach, a signed bat as well.

After the 2001 season, Giambi became a free agent. Hoping to woo him, Yankee management arranged for Yogi Berra, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki to call him. But Giambi wavered. Later, Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman joked: “We probably should have had everyone call Jason’s father.”

Finally, Giambi signed for $120 million over seven years, one of the richest baseball contracts ever. He cut his hair and shaved his goatee, in keeping with the Yankees’ strict dress code.

Giambi was no longer his team’s biggest star; he was one of many. The scrutiny from fans and the media was unlike anything he had experienced.

“Man, Coach, it’s like playing under a microscope,” Giambi told Bastion.

It didn’t matter that the Yankees had an expert coaching staff, Giambi’s father remained his “swing doctor,” Bastion said. Giambi leased a jet to fly his father to New York whenever he needed a consultation.

In his first season as a Yankee, Giambi lived up to expectations, hitting 41 home runs and batting .314. In 2003, Giambi again hit 41 homers but was hampered by a knee injury and batted only .250.

That December, Giambi was called before a grand jury in San Francisco. He was among more than two dozen athletes who testified in the federal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a company believed to have peddled steroids to some of the biggest names in baseball and track and field.

Steroids had been tolerated in big league clubhouses. No longer. Baseball officials had begun random testing for steroids and, beginning with the 2004 season, those who tested positive would face discipline.

Though his testimony was kept secret, Giambi’s world began to unravel. He reported for spring training in 2004 with a noticeably shrunken physique. Asked whether he had been a steroid user, he denied it.

His season was a disaster. Giambi played in fewer than half the Yankees’ games. He looked haggard and complained of exhaustion but was evasive about the cause. Finally, it emerged that he had been treated for a tumor in his pituitary gland. It proved benign.

Then, in December, the San Francisco Chronicle disclosed portions of Giambi’s grand jury testimony from the previous year. He had admitted to using steroids for at least three seasons.

Testifying under a grant of immunity, he said he injected human growth hormone into his stomach and testosterone into his buttocks, took a liquid steroid known as “the clear” and used a steroid balm called “the cream,” the newspaper reported.

The reaction was fierce. “Boot the Bum,” blared a New York Post headline.

Bastion was saddened but not surprised. “Big money talks. They pay the guys who can drive in the runs. That’s what creates this monster.”

Giambi hid from the media for weeks before making a carefully choreographed appearance at Yankee Stadium last month. Sweating and contrite, the five-time All-Star apologized repeatedly without ever using the word “steroids.”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “I hope people will find it in their heart to give me a second chance.”

Last week, Giambi arrived at spring training in Tampa, Fla. During the off-season, the Yankees reacquired first baseman Tino Martinez, the player Giambi had replaced. Now, Giambi has to prove himself all over again.

Hinch said he understands why Giambi strayed. “Athletes all have that desire to get that edge, whether it’s getting more out of life or one more swing of the bat,” he said. “But sometimes getting the edge gets a little cloudy.”

*

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A slugger’s story

Jason Giambi grew from a skinny kid high school teammates called “Gumby” into one of baseball’s most powerful hitters. A chronology:

1986-89: Stars in baseball, basketball and football at South Hills High School in West Covina.

1991: At Cal State Long Beach, he leads the Big West Conference in batting with a .407 average and is named to the all-tournament team at the College World Series.

1992: Plays on the U.S. Olympic baseball team in Barcelona and is selected by the Oakland A’s in the second round of the amateur baseball draft.

1996: In his first full season in the major leagues, he establishes himself as a quality hitter with a .291 batting average, 20 home runs and 40 doubles.

2000: Leads the A’s to a division title with 43 home runs, 137 runs batted in and a .333 average. Named most valuable player of the American League.

2001: Signs with the New York Yankees for $120 million over seven years.

2002: Giambi wins over New York fans by hitting 41 home runs, driving in 122 runs and batting .314.

2003: He again hits 41 home runs, but bats just .250, a career low, during an injury-plagued season. In December, he testifies in secret before a federal grand jury investigating allegations that a Bay Area laboratory illegally dispensed steroids to professional athletes.

2004: Giambi reports for spring training noticeably smaller, stirring speculation that his previous bulk was the result of steroids. He denies it. He misses more than half the season with a variety of ailments. In December, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Giambi, in his grand jury testimony a year earlier, admitted using steroids.

2005: Giambi apologizes to teammates and fans, without explicitly acknowledging steroid use. In February, the former MVP reports to spring training having to prove himself all over again.

Sources: Major League Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Times reporting.