A Black Eye for New York Baseball
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Many of the proudest moments in New York’s baseball history will have to be reassessed in light of a report suggesting that two star Yankees pitchers, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, among more than a dozen current and former top players from the Yankees and the Mets, used illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
The 409-page report by a former Senate majority leader, George Mitchell, the result of 21 months of investigative hearings and interviews with players and trainers, has prompted legislators to announce a full congressional probe into the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones in professional baseball.
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The commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig, who ordered the report, welcomed the findings as “a watershed” in the history of the game and said he would punish players who were found culpable of illegal performance-enhancing drug use.
In delivering his report at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York yesterday, Mitchell, a director of the Boston Red Sox and a former federal prosecutor, described a “steroids era” in baseball in which the use of muscle-building drugs was widespread among a small but significant number of players, including some of the most famous names in the game.
Among the current and former Yankees players found to have used steroids, in what Mitchell called “this troubling chapter in baseball’s history,” were Clemens, a 300-game winner and seven-time Cy Young Award recipient; Pettitte; Jason Giambi; Chuck Knoblauch; David Justice; Kevin Brown, and Gary Sheffield.
Accused abusers who played for the Mets include Paul Lo Duca, Lenny Dykstra, David Segui, Todd Hundley, and Mo Vaughn.
Clemens is mentioned 82 times in the Mitchell report, more than any other player except Barry Bonds, who is currently under indictment for lying to a federal grand jury over steroid use.
Other notable active players include a former MVP, Miguel Tejada, of the Houston Astros, and a former Cy Young winner, Eric Gagne, of the Milwaukee Brewers.
At the center of the steroid misuse was Kirk Radomski, a Mets bat boy, equipment manager, and clubhouse attendant in 1985–95. As part of a plea deal when he confessed to federal authorities to distributing steroids, Radomski agreed to cooperate with Mitchell’s inquiry and name those to whom he sold or administered illegal drugs.
The index of the Mitchell report backs Radomski’s evidence with corroborative signed checks, handwritten letters, telephone records, and shipping receipts.
Radomski told Mitchell’s investigators he met Clemens, then playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, through a former Yankees trainer, Brian McNamee, who regularly injected the star pitcher with steroids. McNamee, who also cooperated with Mitchell, confessed to injecting Pettitte four times with human growth hormone.
“According to McNamee, from the time that McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol through the end of the 1998 season, Clemens’s performance showed remarkable improvement,” Mitchell writes. “During this period of improved performance, Clemens told McNamee that the steroids ‘had a pretty good effect’ on him.”
McNamee told the Mitchell investigators that “during the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens made it clear that he was ready to use steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin.”
Mitchell said he gave players who were implicated by drug pushers a chance to meet with him and explain or deny their actions. Almost without exception, Mitchell says, the players refused.
Although Mitchell’s report is populated with some of the most famous names in baseball history, he concedes that he has not provided a definitive list of offenders.
“The illegal use of these substances was not limited to the players who are identified in this report,” he writes, and the practice was so widespread that “each of the [30 MLB] clubs has had players who have been involved.”
But the former senator urges that a line be drawn under the affair so that the pursuit of further names does not become a witch hunt.
“Baseball does not need and cannot afford to engage in a never-ending search for the name of every player who ever used performance enhancing substances,” he writes.
Nor does Mitchell recommend that the players be punished for their misdeeds, “except in those cases where [Selig] determines that the conduct is so serious that discipline is necessary to maintain the integrity of the game.”
Mitchell, a distinguished lawmaker who is credited with having successfully negotiated a settlement between the warring Catholic and Protestant factions in Northern Ireland, was commissioned by Selig to find out the extent of illegal drug use in baseball and make recommendations to halt their use.
Nonetheless, Mitchell squarely blames the scandal on those who administer baseball, the players’ trade union, the Baseball Players Association, and those players who bolstered their performances by steroid use.
“The use of steroids in Major League Baseball was widespread. The response by baseball was slow to develop and was initially ineffective. For many years, citing concerns for the privacy rights of the players, the Players Association opposed mandatory random drug testing of its members for steroids and other substances,” he writes.
While acknowledging that the random steroid testing introduced in 2002 appears to have purged much of the illegal drug use from baseball, the former senator remained concerned that human growth hormone cannot yet be detected easily by drug testing. During the 2003 season, random tests showed that up to 7% of Major Leaguers were using performance-enhancing substances.
Selig acknowledged the importance of Mitchell’s findings. “His report is a call to action and I will act,” he said. “I will deal with active players identified as users of performance-enhancing substances. Discipline of players and others will be determined on a case-by-case basis. If action is needed, it will be taken,” he told reporters at a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria.
President Bush, who owned the Texas Rangers in the early 1990s, a time when steroid use there is said to have been rampant, urged players to cooperate fully with any subsequent investigation. His press secretary, Dana Perino, said the president had no knowledge of steroid use by his team members.
“The president said he thought long and hard about it. He just does not recall ever hearing it or seeing it,” Ms. Perino said.
“The president hopes that this report marks the beginning of the end of steroid abuse.” she said.