The Yankee Years Part 5

"Roger is a guy who, when I got to know him, I realized what a bulldog he was. Before, it looked like it was ability but the guy steering the s.h.i.+p wasn't a guy I'd put in the cla.s.s of pitchers such as Koufax, Gibson, Drysdale and Ryan-until I got to know him. Now, in my mind, he belongs there."

Getting an Edge

The 1998 baseball season was a party of epic proportions, the equivalent of an all-nighter with the music cranked and every care in the world, or at least the anger and bitterness of the 199495 players' strike, easily forgotten. The 1998 Yankees, the winningest team of all time, were just part of the fun for Bud Selig, whose caretaking role as interim commissioner finally ended in midsummer. Bud Selig, who had owned the Milwaukee Brewers, was the ultimate insider.

It was an expansion year, with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks adding two more television markets, $260 million in expansion fees, and another 324 games to the inventory of moneymaking possibilities. Attendance jumped 12 percent, with almost seven and a half million more people paying their way into ballparks. The per-game major league average improved by 4 percent to 29,054, the best it had been since before the strike hit. The ratings for games televised by Fox improved by 11 percent.

It was the year David Wells threw his perfect game, a rookie Cubs pitcher named Kerry Wood struck out a record-tying 20 batters and the age-defying Roger Clemens, while in the employ of the Toronto Blue Jays at that stage of his pitcher-for-hire phase, became the first pitcher to strike out 18 or more batters in a game for the third time.

Most of all, it was the year that belonged to hitters, who just happened to be growing cartoonishly large and hitting baseb.a.l.l.s into parts of ballparks where no baseb.a.l.l.s had gone before. It was a freak show and baseball loved it. It was the first season in history in which four players. .h.i.t 50 home runs. Greg Vaughn and Ken Griffey Jr., half of the 50-plus bombers that year, were dwarfed in size, production and attention by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Both McGwire, with 70 home runs, and Sosa, with 66, blew away the record 61 home runs of Roger Maris that had stood as the standard for 37 years. America was captivated by the two huge men and the great home-run race. Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Ma.s.sachusetts, praised McGwire and Sosa as the "home-run kings for working families in America." McGwire, with forearms the size of a grown man's neck, 17 inches around, was a gate attraction unto himself, a modern wonder of the world. Ballparks opened their gates early and called in concession staffs to clock in early just to accommodate the thousands of fans who wanted to see him take batting practice. On September 9, Fox sc.r.a.pped the season premieres of its prime-time Tuesday night shows to televise the game in which McGwire would hit his record-breaking 62nd home run. More than 43 million people watched.

Baseball was awash in goodwill, national attention and money like it had not seen in many years. The Los Angeles Dodgers garishly flaunted such largesse after that season by giving Kevin Brown, a pitcher soon to turn 34 years old, an age when players traditionally had neared retirement as their bodies gave out, a seven-year contract worth $105 million, sweetening the deal with private jet service back and forth from his Georgia home.

That same winter, with the party raging at full throttle, one man rose up and basically announced the whole d.a.m.n thing was a fraud. Rick h.e.l.ling, a 27-year-old righthanded pitcher and the players' representative for the Texas Rangers, stood up at the winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players a.s.sociation and made an announcement. He told his fellow union leaders that steroid use by ballplayers had grown rampant and was corrupting the game.

"There is this problem with steroids," h.e.l.ling told them. "It's happening. It's real. And it's so prevalent that guys who aren't doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they're falling behind. It's not a level playing field. We've got to figure out a way to address it.

"It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that's what's happening. And I don't feel like this is the right way to go."

What h.e.l.ling had just done was the equivalent of turning up all the lights, clicking off the music and announcing the party was over. "He was the first guy," David Cone said, "who had the guts to stand up at a union meeting and say that in front of everybody and put pressure on it."

There was only one way for baseball to react to this kind of whistleblowing: Crank the music back up and keep the party rolling.

The union was having too much fun and making too much money to pay much attention to h.e.l.ling's warning. It was far easier and financially prudent to ignore the issue, to a.s.sume that h.e.l.ling was an alarmist p.r.o.ne to exaggerating, and to make sure everyone involved knew as little as possible about players injecting hard-core steroids into their a.s.ses. Don't ask, don't tell and don't care was the unwritten code of the day.

"What really bothered me was there were plenty of good guys, good people, who were feeling the pressure to cheat because it had become so prevalent," h.e.l.ling said. "I firmly believed at the time that it was an unlevel playing field. I was trying to find a way to do something about it. Make it as fair of a game as possible. Play it the right way.

"When you see guys coming into spring training camp thirty pounds heavier than they ended the previous season, or they had gained four or fives miles an hour on their fastball, I mean, those things are not normal. My whole career was played in the peak of the steroids era. I saw guys throwing 87 miles an hour one year and 95 the next. Unfortunately, a lot of people, the press, the owners, the players, they turned the other cheek. I was like, 'Are you serious? Can't you see what's going on? Are you seriously going to let these guys get away with it?'

"Unfortunately, it turned out just the way I thought it would. It blew up in our face."

The union's executive board paid little attention to h.e.l.ling. The owners were of a similar mindset. In fact, within a matter of days of h.e.l.ling sounding an alarm that went unheeded, baseball provided official proof that steroids were not considered an urgent problem. At those same 1998 winter baseball meetings in Nashville, baseball's two medical directors, Dr. Robert Millman, who was appointed by the owners, and Dr. Joel Solomon, the designee of the players, delivered a presentation to baseball executives and physicians about the benefits benefits of using testosterone. Angels general manager Bill Stoneman was so surprised at the tone of the presentation-basically, the message he heard was that no evidence exists that steroids were harmful-that he wondered why Major League Baseball even had allowed it. of using testosterone. Angels general manager Bill Stoneman was so surprised at the tone of the presentation-basically, the message he heard was that no evidence exists that steroids were harmful-that he wondered why Major League Baseball even had allowed it.

Also in attendance was Dr. William Wilder, the physician for the Cleveland Indians. Wilder was so disturbed by the presentation that he wrote a memorandum to Indians general manager John Hart that whether testosterone increased muscle strength and endurance "begs the question of whether it should be used in athletics." Wilder also endorsed sending information to players about the "known and unknown data about performance-enhancing substances."

Wilder also spoke directly with Gene Orza of the players a.s.sociation. Orza advised him to hold off on any education about supplements until more information was available. Wilder was incredulous. Of Orza's request to postone any action, the doctor wrote, "That will be never! Orza and the Players a.s.sociation want to do further study . . . so nothing will be done."

Orza infamously revealed the players' position on steroids more blatantly in 2004, even long after the lid blew off the steroid epidemic in baseball. Speaking as part of a panel discussion in a public forum, Orza said, "Let's a.s.sume that [steroids] are a very bad thing to take. I have no doubt that they are not worse than cigarettes. But I would never say to the clubs as an individual who represents the interests of players, 'Gee, I guess by not allowing baseball to suspend and fine players for smoking cigarettes, I am not protecting their health.' "

Well, there you had it. No wonder n.o.body wanted to listen to h.e.l.ling. The owners and players didn't even want to acknowledge that something harmful was going on. A presentation on the benefits benefits of testosterone? Not worse than cigarettes? h.e.l.ling, though, didn't give up. Each year he would make the same speech at the players a.s.sociation board meeting . . . 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 . . . and each year nothing would happen, except that more and more bodies grew unnaturally bigger and the game became twisted into a perversion, its nuances and subtleties blasted away by the naked obsession with power. Baseball was reduced to the lowest common denominator: to whack the ball farther or to heave it faster. Baseball's inability and unwillingness to act made silent partners of Selig and his traditional rivals at the union, leaders Don Fehr and Orza. Neither side had the smarts or the stomach to make steroids a front-burner public issue. of testosterone? Not worse than cigarettes? h.e.l.ling, though, didn't give up. Each year he would make the same speech at the players a.s.sociation board meeting . . . 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 . . . and each year nothing would happen, except that more and more bodies grew unnaturally bigger and the game became twisted into a perversion, its nuances and subtleties blasted away by the naked obsession with power. Baseball was reduced to the lowest common denominator: to whack the ball farther or to heave it faster. Baseball's inability and unwillingness to act made silent partners of Selig and his traditional rivals at the union, leaders Don Fehr and Orza. Neither side had the smarts or the stomach to make steroids a front-burner public issue.

"Steve [Fehr] and Don came to me and said, 'Rick h.e.l.ling is talking up steroids. Do you think there's a problem here?' " Cone said, referring to the Fehr brothers, including Steve, Cone's agent. "I said, 'Maybe we need to talk to guys, but I don't really see a problem.' "

The union, h.e.l.ling said, did talk to some players about it, but the pitcher was wise enough not to expect anything to come of it.

"I understood their side of it, from a lawyer's side," h.e.l.ling said. "Their thinking was, 'This isn't anything owners.h.i.+p has asked us for. It's never been an issue [in bargaining]. So why would we give them something without getting something in return. Why open this box?'

"I was active in the union. I know Don and Gene very well. Still to this day I talk to them. I understand. 'We don't want to go down that road if we don't have to.' Every year I brought it up. I'd say, 'This is more of a problem than you think.' Bud, Gene, Don . . . they had an idea of what was going on. They didn't realize how widespread it was. As players, we kind of did know. Whether it was 50 percent or whatever, I can't say. It was more than people thought. It was more than Don, Gene and Bud thought. So the thinking was more, 'If owners.h.i.+p didn't ask for it, why volunteer it? It's probably not that big a deal.' "

h.e.l.ling said he never saw a player inject steroids, but he heard all the clubhouse talk about what players were doing, as they would euphemistically put it, to "get an edge." h.e.l.ling himself had a very clear understanding of what was cheating and what was not. He was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota, and became one of only fifteen men born in that state to become a big leaguer. He attended Stanford University and made his major league debut with Texas only two years after the Rangers selected him with a second round pick in the 1992 draft. He pitched decently for both the Rangers and Marlins (he was once traded to Florida and back within 11 months) before committing himself to a strenuous conditioning and fitness program after the 1997 season. In 1998, his first full year as a starting pitcher, he won 20 games. He would pitch twelve seasons in the majors, compiling a record of 93-81 while earning more than $15 million.

"I can look back on my career, and whether it was good or bad, I know that everything I did, I did myself," h.e.l.ling said. "I didn't do any form of cheating. It's unfortunate that there were a lot of people I knew who thought, 'I need to do something to keep up.' You hear the excuses of the guys who admitted it: 'I felt like I had to do it.' The way I looked at it, when I wasn't good enough to do it myself, it was time to move on. A lot of players didn't think like that. Guys always had an excuse of why they could do it.

"That's not what I was about. I can look back and know it was all me. That's the most important thing. I have my name and my reputation. Anybody who knows me knows there was no doubt that I played it the right way. And that's what I wanted to leave the game with. I couldn't care less if I made one million dollars or one hundred million dollars, whether I won one game or whether I won three hundred games. I was in it to be honest to myself and my teammates and to be a good father and husband. For me it was just the way I was brought up."

Rick h.e.l.ling, by playing clean, was swimming against the tide.

The party that was 1998 was also the same year the Toronto Blue Jays hired a man named Brian McNamee to be their strength and conditioning trainer. McNamee was a Queens, New York, kid, the son of a detective, who had attended St. John's University, majoring in athletic administration and playing baseball. In 1990 he began working as a New York City police officer. Three years later McNamee met Tim McCleary, an a.s.sistant general manager for the Yankees. Like McNamee, McCleary was a St. John's guy. McCleary helped hire McNamee in 1993 to be a bullpen catcher for the Yankees. McNamee spent three seasons with the Yankees until he became a casualty of the managerial and staff changes after the 1995 season, when Torre replaced Buck Showalter. McCleary also moved on after that 1995 season. He quit the Yankees and quickly resurfaced with the Toronto Blue Jays in a similar capacity.

McNamee, meanwhile, reinvented himself as a strength and fitness trainer. He was out of baseball for three years before McCleary reached out to his friend in 1998 to come back not as a bullpen catcher but as a strength coach for the Jays. McNamee had been out of baseball for three years. What he found shocked him. Steroids and drugs were everywhere. What had been a rogue, underground, fringe culture of steroid and performance-enhancing drug use only three years ago had become an all-out pharmacological war by 1998.

"From '93 to '95 you didn't see any of it," McNamee said. "Supplements and some things here and there . . . Then in '98 . . . it was just . . . I couldn't believe it."

Drug use had become so prevalent by 1998 that ballplayers talked openly about it among themselves, including speculation about who was using what and what drugs provided the best benefit. McNamee was stunned by the prevalence of the drug use and openness with which players discussed it.

The physical stature, success and popularity of McGwire and Sosa obviously contributed to the rush for players to gain strength. According to the book Game of Shadows, Game of Shadows, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, it was the adulation given McGwire and Sosa that pushed Barry Bonds into the world of performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds, then 33 years old and at his natural peak, was an enormously gifted and far better all-around player than either McGwire or Sosa. In 1998 Bonds batted .303 with 37 home runs, a career-high 44 doubles and 122 runs batted in while stealing 28 bases and winning a Gold Glove. It was an astonis.h.i.+ngly great season. It also was completely ignored. Seventeen players. .h.i.t more home runs than did Bonds. McGwire and Sosa eclipsed all of them. McGwire and Sosa redefined not only the home-run record but also what it meant to be a national baseball hero. They were largely one-dimensional players who could not run, field or throw like Bonds, but America loved them for their heft and their ability to hit a baseball a very long way. Bonds, the superior player who was ignored, was just one of many players who recognized in McGwire and Sosa that the rules of engagement had been changed. by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, it was the adulation given McGwire and Sosa that pushed Barry Bonds into the world of performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds, then 33 years old and at his natural peak, was an enormously gifted and far better all-around player than either McGwire or Sosa. In 1998 Bonds batted .303 with 37 home runs, a career-high 44 doubles and 122 runs batted in while stealing 28 bases and winning a Gold Glove. It was an astonis.h.i.+ngly great season. It also was completely ignored. Seventeen players. .h.i.t more home runs than did Bonds. McGwire and Sosa eclipsed all of them. McGwire and Sosa redefined not only the home-run record but also what it meant to be a national baseball hero. They were largely one-dimensional players who could not run, field or throw like Bonds, but America loved them for their heft and their ability to hit a baseball a very long way. Bonds, the superior player who was ignored, was just one of many players who recognized in McGwire and Sosa that the rules of engagement had been changed.

Said Cone, "After that, after 1998, there was a little four- or five-year window there where things happened real quickly."

Nineteen ninety-eight didn't invent steroids in baseball; it only made them mainstream inside the game. Until then, steroid use occupied a dark corner of the game that was best left unspoken. Former Most Valuable Player Jose Canseco began shooting steroids thirteen years earlier, in 1985. One dealer, Curtis Wenzlaff, was supplying 20 to 25 ballplayers with steroids at the time of his conviction in 1992. Lenny Dykstra, the former Mets and Phillies outfielder, admitting to using steroids as far back as 1989, according to Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant who became a key drug supplier to ballplayers. Radomski was busted by federal authorities in 2005 and forced to cooperate with the 2007 baseball investigation into steroids chaired by former senator George Mitch.e.l.l.

"I think [baseball] guys were taking it in the '70s and early '80s, but they didn't work out," McNamee said. "Working out became prevalent in the '80s, the mid- to late-'80s, so that's when you saw the bulk. That's when you saw the power. Because you just can't take it in high doses and see the benefit. You have to work out. And that's when the strength and conditioning era came into play, where they started to say, 'Well, it's not bad [to weight train]. It doesn't make you tight.'

"That's when they started hiring strength coaches, who were basically people's friends, but at least they monitored the weight room. They had guys lifting heavy. They were all ex-football guys, from college programs. Penn State. Florida State. They were hiring these a.s.sistant guys and they had football [training] programs. And everybody in college was taking steroids, so at least the knowledge was there.

"Guys that got big had success. Canseco was a sprinter in a big body. Dykstra was a short, little fast guy. Now, the bigger they got the more hurt they got. But they did put up some good numbers. Then the education got better, where the pitchers weren't getting bulky but they were getting better."

Radomski was the right guy at the right time. He turned his baseball connections and own experiences as a weight-lifting gym rat into a booming business. Radomski told Mitch.e.l.l that first baseman David Segui admitted using steroids as far back as 1994, when Segui played for the Mets and Radomski still worked for the club as a clubhouse attendant for the team. Segui, Radomski said, took the steroid Deca-Durabolin "because it was safe, did not expire for three or four years and was thought to alleviate back pain."

Safe? Baseball, like other sports, had turned a significant corner in making steroid use acceptable. The health risks a.s.sociated with steroids, including high-blood pressure, increased cancer risks and the shutdown of natural testosterone production by the body, had caused much of the taboo status a.s.sociated with steroids. It used to be that an athlete had two hurdles between him and taking the plunge into steroid use: one was the severe health risk and the other was the moral issue of what was an illegal form of cheating. What happened in the 1990s was that ballplayers, with the help of trainers and drug "gurus," completely knocked down the first hurdle. (And the second? Well, it wasn't cheating if there were no rules, right? Down it, too, went.) The athletes learned, largely from the guinea pigs of the gym and bodybuilding cultures, how to use steroids "properly." Deca, for instance, might require one or two injections a week, perhaps in the range of 300 to 600 milligrams per week, for a cycle of about eight weeks. An anti-estrogen drug such as Clomid may be required at the end of the cycle.

The specter of Lyle Alzado no longer haunted them. Alzado was the former NFL lineman who told Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated in 1991 that he had injected himself with steroids and human growth hormone almost constantly and, in his view, such chronic use was the reason why he was dying from a brain tumor. (Alzado died the following year at age 43.) The in 1991 that he had injected himself with steroids and human growth hormone almost constantly and, in his view, such chronic use was the reason why he was dying from a brain tumor. (Alzado died the following year at age 43.) The Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated cover image of a gaunt, bald, dying Alzado was arresting. So were his words. cover image of a gaunt, bald, dying Alzado was arresting. So were his words.

"Now look at me," said the once hirsute, brawny man. "My hair's gone. I wobble when I walk and have to hold on to someone for support, and I have trouble remembering things. My last wish? That no one else ever dies this way."

His warning had less shelf life than Deca. Almost immediately, and certainly within a year or two, baseball players had dismissed Alzado's death as an anomaly of another age that did not concern them. His problem, they reasoned, was that he had taken too many steroids for too long without properly educating himself. Ballplayers could go to their drug "gurus," or even one another, to learn how to use steroids. This was very good for the business of people such as Radomski, who quickly went from picking up sweaty socks and dirty jocks from the Mets clubhouse floor to helping change how baseball was played with his supply of drugs and the expertise with how to use them.

"Yeah, there were whispers about what was going on," Cone said, "but we really didn't know for sure. I was stunned about the oil-based steroids. I keep going back to Lyle Alzado. Stacking steroids? I never made the connection. I never understood that. I saw Lyle Alzado die because of that. I would never think about that. For what? So you can get big and blow up? Maybe I was naive. Guys were getting big around the league here and there but who knew what they were taking. I made the connection to over-the-counter supplements rather than Lyle Alzadotype synthetic oil-based steroids. I was stunned to hear that later."

After the 1995 season, according to the Mitch.e.l.l report, Mets catcher Todd Hundley asked his clubhouse buddy, Radomski, for some help. Hundley was 26 years old and by and large an average major league player. He had played six seasons in the big leagues and never had hit more than 16 home runs or earned a salary of more than $1 million. Radomski started him on cycles of Deca and testosterone. This stuff was so good, Radomski told him, that he would hit 40 home runs on it. In 1996, Todd Hundley truly made Radomski look like a guru; he hit 41 home runs. He went on to make more than $47 million.

Radomski's business was taking off. It began with his personal connection to several Mets players or those he knew who came through the Mets' system, including Hundley, Segui, Fernando Vina, Chris Donnels, Josias Manzanillo and Mark Carreon. Business boomed through word-of-mouth referrals, and as those Mets players moved on to new teams to introduce whole new subsets of players to Radomski's magic. Segui, for instance, became Radomski's friend and one of his best salesmen, according to the Mitch.e.l.l Report, sending customer after customer to Radomski as he bounced among six teams after leaving the Mets. The Mitch.e.l.l Report alone names at least four players Segui introduced to Radomski: F. P. Santangelo, Mike Lansing, Larry Bigbie and Tim Laker.

All types of players flocked to Radomski. In 1995, for instance, Laker was a nondescript backup catcher for the Montreal Expos who was ready to jump the two hurdles of the health risk and the morality issue to get his hands on steroids. Segui was his connection, even though Segui had joined him as a teammate with the Expos only on June 8 of that same year. Segui put Laker in touch with his own steroids supplier, Radomski. Laker and Radomski met at the New York City hotel where the Expos stayed while in town for a series against the Mets.

Laker was 25 years old and owned a lifetime major league batting average of .205 with no home runs entering that 1995 season. He was the very definition of a fringe player, at risk at any time of being washed back to the minors and possibly even out of the game. He had trouble putting on weight, which he later blamed on a digestive disease for which he was diagnosed three years earlier.

The bra.s.s ring, however, was to hang around the big leagues long enough to make some money, provide for his family and maybe even qualify for one of those nice pensions for which the players a.s.sociation had bargained. What would you do for the bra.s.s ring? Work hard and eat right? Sure. But what if that wasn't enough? What if there was something else, even if it was illegal, that could bring the bra.s.s ring further into reach? And what if you knew there were no rules against it? And what if you knew guys in your clubhouse and guys across the field were taking it? Laker gladly took the leap over the two hurdles.

Radomski set him up with a doping regimen of Deca and testosterone. Laker would administer it himself. The catcher would inject himself in the b.u.t.tocks once a week for 8 to 10 weeks, take some time off (in part so the body's natural testosterone production, fooled by the synthetic drugs, would not shut down entirely), and then crank up another cycle. When the Expos were home Laker would shoot up at his residence. When they were on the road he would shoot up in his hotel room, which presented something of a problem as far as how to dispose of the dirty syringes laced with an illegal drug. Laker decided he would wrap them up and transport them in his belongings out of the country and back to Montreal. He would dispose of them there.

Laker put on weight. The Montreal trainer complimented him on his improved physique. He kept doping for six years. Tim Laker did not transform into a star even with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. He never became an All-Star who hit 41 home runs in a season. He never set the home run record or made the cover of Time Time magazine or hit b.a.l.l.s more than 500 feet or aroused suspicion from the media or fans. But he did carve out a major league career that included parts of 11 seasons and a .226 batting average. He was still in the big leagues at age 36. Tim Laker was nothing special. No, there were hundreds and hundreds of Tim Lakers out there in professional baseball. magazine or hit b.a.l.l.s more than 500 feet or aroused suspicion from the media or fans. But he did carve out a major league career that included parts of 11 seasons and a .226 batting average. He was still in the big leagues at age 36. Tim Laker was nothing special. No, there were hundreds and hundreds of Tim Lakers out there in professional baseball.

"It's unfortunate," h.e.l.ling said, "that I had a lot of people I knew say, 'I feel like I need to do something to keep up.' They'd say, 'I played with this guy for four or five years and suddenly he's. .h.i.tting 30 home runs. We play the same position. I need to keep up.'

"You hear excuses from guys who have admitted [juicing]. 'I felt like I had to do it.' 'I did it to keep healthy.' The way I looked at it, when I wasn't good enough myself, it was time to move on. A lot of players didn't think that. When they lost velocity or they did not have enough power to hit home runs, guys always had an excuse for why they could do it."

Laker became yet another Radomski success story. The story might have been small scale, but it was a success story nonetheless. It was a story that was being repeated with growing frequency in every major league clubhouse, including that of the model franchise of major league baseball, the New York Yankees.

Nineteen ninety-eight was also the year Roger Clemens met Brian McNamee, Tim McCleary's St. John's buddy hired to be the Blue Jays strength coach. McNamee had earned his doctorate at something called Columbus University in Louisiana, which later would move to Mississippi after being shut down in Louisiana after it was found to be an online "diploma mill." Clemens and McNamee made a connection, not so much as personal friends but as devotees of training. Clemens loved to work, but he always needed company, almost in the manner of someone who needed an audience rather than a taskmaster. McNamee, quiet and perpetually somber, was not a gregarious audience. But he was loyal, industrious and serious almost to a fault about training. McNamee gained Clemens' trust. That was never more apparent than in June of that season, just months after they had met, when Clemens asked McNamee to stick a needle full of Winstrol in his b.u.t.tocks, according to what McNamee told Mitch.e.l.l in the presence of federal agents and later repeated in a sworn deposition to Congress. Clemens several times, including in front of a congressional committee, denied ever using steroids and filed a defamation lawsuit against McNamee.

"I knew nothing about it until Clemens came to me and asked me to stick him in the a.s.s in '98," McNamee said. "Winstrol was stupid [good]. You get a guy throwing 82 [mph], he takes Winstrol he's throwing 92. It's a sprinter's drug. For fast-twitch muscle fiber.

If I took Winstrol in college I would have thrown a hundred. Without a doubt. I don't know if it existed then. But yeah, Ben Johnson took it. It's a big sprinter's drug. Hamstring, rotator cuff . . . oh, it definitely works. Horses were taking it."

Clemens already was among the greatest pitchers of his generation, if not of all time. Clemens on a steroid regimen as alleged by McNamee was literally unbeatable. Clemens went 14-0 with a 2.29 ERA for the rest of the season. In his final 11 starts alone that season Clemens' game-by-game strikeout totals were 14, 8, 15, 6, 18, 7, 11, 7, 11, 15 and 11. Only one other time in Clemens' career did he strike out at least 14 batters four times in an entire season, entire season, and that had occurred when he was 10 years younger. And yet in 1998 he did it in just the last two months of a season in which he threw 234 and that had occurred when he was 10 years younger. And yet in 1998 he did it in just the last two months of a season in which he threw 234[image]innings at the advanced age of 36. It was a freakishly phenomenal season, but like many achievements in 1998, gained little recognition because of the overwhelming fascination with McGwire, Sosa and the Great Home-Run Race.

The Yankees noticed. They traded an 18-game winner off their 125-win team, Wells, the same pitcher who had thrown a perfect game, too, to get Clemens from the Blue Jays at the start of their 1999 spring training camp. Clemens wanted his new buddy and trainer, McNamee, to join him with the Yankees. There was a problem, though. McNamee was under contract to the Blue Jays.

"He tried to get me out of my contract in '99," McNamee said. "I had a player's contract. And he wanted me out of there by the All-Star break. The only thing is [the Blue Jays] would have filed a grievance and I would have been unable to work with a team for six or seven years because I broke my contract. And that's why I didn't leave. I wanted to leave the door open to get back into Major League Baseball. So I let it go."

Without McNamee, Clemens did not pitch well in New York. Clemens' ERA jumped by nearly two runs in 1999 to 4.60, the worst mark of his career. He did win the clinching game of the World Series against Atlanta. Just weeks later, McNamee said, Clemens called him.

"You're not going back to Toronto," Clemens said.

"Okay," McNamee said. "I'll train you."

McNamee, the New York kid, was happy about coming home. There were a couple of issues that needed to be worked out, though. Clemens didn't want to have to fly McNamee around the country to train him while the Yankees were on the road, so he pet.i.tioned the Yankees to make McNamee a strength coach. But the Yankees already had a strength coach, Jeff Mangold. Did they need another one? They did if they wanted to keep Clemens happy and productive.

McNamee flew to Tampa to meet with Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and a.s.sistant Mark Newman. A deal was struck. McNamee would be named as the team's a.s.sistant strength coach, with a base salary, full medical benefits and complete access to the Yankees players and facilities. There was only one catch: Clemens would have to pay McNamee's salary. The Yankees would deduct the money from Clemens' salary and give it to McNamee. The arrangement suited Clemens, who now had his personal trainer with him at all times on the staff of the New York Yankees without the bother of having to make separate travel arrangements for him or the worry of trying to gain him access to club facilities. Even McNamee found it odd that one player, acquired in a trade, not even with the leverage of free agency, essentially appointed his personal trainer to the team, a team that had forged its reputation on turning unselfishness into champions.h.i.+ps.

"It was set up to fail," McNamee said. "Because I went in there to try to help and Roger put up a front and it was like me versus Mangold. Mangold was Joe's guy, but Roger would tell the players to go see me, not Mangold. And I hated going to work every day."

McNamee had trained Clemens, Andy Pett.i.tte and pitcher C. J. Nitkowski in Houston that winter after the 1999 season. When McNamee arrived at the Yankees' 2000 spring training camp, it took only the first minute of the first stretching exercises of the first day of workouts for trouble to start. McNamee was leading the team in stretching when Cone, the respected elder statesman of the Yankees, yelled at him with only a modic.u.m of humor that intentionally could not disguise his anger.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing here leading stretching?" Cone yelled for all of his teammates to hear. "Did you get a quickie degree? What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here doing this!"

Cone went on to trash McNamee so badly that the pitcher admits, "I was getting a little embarra.s.sed because it was in front of the whole team." Cone, the old-school union man, was upset not only because he felt the Yankees catered to Clemens' wants by hiring him, but also because he regarded McNamee as a gate-crasher, somebody who had entered the elite club of Major League Baseball without earning his way there, which is how the players have to do it.

"McNamee's leading the team in stretching and he's Roger's guy," Cone said, "and then there's Jeff Mangold, who's another Gold's Gym guy from Jersey who wasn't qualified to have a big league job, I thought. I never understood why major league clubs would not use guys internally. Train them the way you want to train them and hire them in that position. I never understood that. None of those guys were ever properly vetted.

"I didn't like McNamee. Not that he was a bad guy. I never thought he was properly vetted. [Trainers] Gene Monahan and Steve Donahue were just like us. They had to go through the minor leagues. They were vetted. They rode the buses. They ate the ketchup sandwiches. They worked their way up to the big leagues. I always thought, There is another Gene Monahan in Double-A or Triple-A that has three kids and a family and needs a big league job. Why did McNamee get it? He went back and got a quickie degree? The guy was a bullpen catcher in '95 for me. Then all of a sudden he's gone, he comes back, he's doing some sports book? Basically, he's a hustler. And now he's a trainer.

"I didn't use either one of those guys. I used [trainers] Gene Monahan or Steve Donahue if I needed something. I never, ever understood that. That was more on principle than anything I saw. And yeah, there were whispers about what was going on, but we really didn't know."

What was going on was that the Yankees, like every team in baseball, were increasingly turning to steroids and human growth hormone, and those so inclined now had someone on the payroll and in uniform and on the team plane to provide information and access to those drugs at any time if they so wished. In 2000 and 2001 the Yankees would joke among themselves about guys who worked closely with McNamee, especially the ones who showed obvious strength and body-type changes. "He's on Mac's program" was the joke, which often was reduced to the simple shorthand of "He's on 'The Program.' " No one knew for certain the details of "The Program." No one wanted to know the details. These were the days of "don't ask, don't tell, don't care."

"They were on his program, guys like Roger and Andy and maybe [Mike] Stanton," Cone said. "I thought he had some GNC stuff he was putting in shakes, over-the-counter stuff, maybe creatine or andro or whatever you can get over the counter. I thought that's what he was doing. I had no idea he had kits [of human growth hormone]."

McNamee intentionally kept a low profile. He rarely spoke or smiled. That was his personality.

"If I could go through the day without talking to anybody, it was a good day," McNamee said.

Besides, he sensed the friction created by the a.s.sumption that he was "Roger's guy."

"Bernie, Posada, Mariano, Pett.i.tte, they all knew me because I was there when they first came up," McNamee said. "But then the pitchers start talking and the players start talking and it's like a little b.i.t.c.h fest. 'Oh, go see Mac.' Then it was like I was doing my own thing."

"Go see Mac" and "The Program" became understood code for seeking out supplement options, legal or perhaps not. McNamee claims to be personally opposed to illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

"I had guys ask me general questions," McNamee said. "I would give the good and the bad and my recommendation would be not to do it. I can get 200 players now I talked out of doing it. Or said no to. But I never said I could get stuff to anybody. I think because of [Jason] Grimsley, Roger knew that I knew a guy, and because David [Justice] knew that I knew a guy and I knew that his stuff was legit, clean and whatever. And that's where the problem started. And I enabled that. And I shouldn't have."

McNamee also had a practical reason for not emphasizing steroids: they would devalue his work as a trainer. How could he claim credit for the benefits of a conditioning program, for instance, if a steroid shortcut available to anybody made the biggest difference of all? But by 2000 and 2001 the drug culture in baseball was so firmly established that ballplayers were going to cheat whether McNamee or any other strength coach was on board with it or not. The signs were too obvious. Wells, for instance, would later write in his 2003 book, Perfect I'm Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball, Perfect I'm Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball, that you could stand anywhere in the clubhouse and be no more than 10 feet away from illegal drugs. that you could stand anywhere in the clubhouse and be no more than 10 feet away from illegal drugs.

"Yeah, that's a good guesstimate," McNamee said. "Guys were looking in each other's lockers, guys were searching . . . that was pretty much it. Some guys were open about it, some guys weren't.

"And you wouldn't believe the s.h.i.+t they were taking. I mean, it was like horses.h.i.+t and c.r.a.p. Like, they didn't know the toxicity levels. They didn't know orals. They were taking whatever the f.u.c.k . . . they were taking Ritalin, oral steroids . . . they were taking stuff that was bad for them. And then they're going out all night because they've got amphetamines in them, and they're drinking, and then they're sleeping all day, and then they've got to take amphetamines . . . It's a vicious cycle."

Amphetamines had long been established in baseball to combat the mental and physical grind of the baseball season. But they became a routine part of the game.

"If you're not cheatin', you're not tryin,' " McNamee said. "That was the motto."

McNamee said players from the Blue Jays and Yankees during his year there would store their amphetamines in their lockers, but disguised in the plastic canisters of over-the-counter supplements.

"When you see that 'Ripped Fuel' thing? It was usually full of greenies," McNamee said.

He said obtaining amphetamines was easy. Players never even had to leave their own clubhouse.

"There was a guy in California, a Mexican guy," McNamee said.

"He'd sit there all day in the clubhouse. Guys would sign bats for him, and he'd give them boxes of greenies. In Anaheim. He'd be sitting there with a satchel full of greenies. There was green and green-and-light-green. That's what they used to make the coffee with.

"We used to open 'em up and put 'em in the coffee in the clubhouse, which I took one time [in 1998] and didn't know. I almost had a heart attack. I was out stretching guys. One of the Blue Jays was like, 'Did you drink the coffee?' I said, 'Yeah. It's right near my locker.' He goes, 'Never drink the clubhouse coffee. Go to the back.' I'm like, 'All right. Thanks for telling me.'

"I didn't know one pitcher on Toronto's team that wasn't taking them, when he pitched. It's speed. Guys were beaning up to play golf after workouts."

The prevalence of amphetamines contributed to the general acceptance of illegal drugs in clubhouses. Steroid use had spread virally around baseball. Segui, for instance, was traded in the second half of the 1999 season from Seattle to Toronto, where he met McNamee. McNamee went to the Yankees the next year, where he met pitcher Jason Grimsley. McNamee gave Grimsley Segui's telephone number, knowing both were interested in performance-enhancing drugs. And then one day during that 2000 season, McNamee was sitting with Grimsley in the Yankees bullpen during a game when he happened to mention that he really liked the Lexus RX300 SUV.

"Really?" Grimsley said. "I know a guy who works with Lexus."

Grimsley gave McNamee the name and telephone number of his friend. His friend's name was Kirk Radomski. McNamee called him and arranged to meet him at a car-detailing shop.

"And that's how I met him," McNamee said.

Radomski and McNamee became friends and business a.s.sociates. Much later, after the feds closed in on them, they also became star witnesses in the Mitch.e.l.l Report. The connection became a convenient one for Grimsley, who was purchasing his drugs from Radomski. Why not, Grimsley figured, have McNamee do his legwork? He asked McNamee to pick up his kits of human growth hormone from Radomski. McNamee obliged, even though he was putting himself into the dangerous area of drug distribution.