THE FIRST MONTH of 2002 is not a time of great optimism in America, and the mood will only grow worse as the year wears on. More troops are shipped out to fight in Afghanistan, the FBI still doesn’t know who is sending anthrax-laced letters, and the CIA warns of more terror attacks on U.S. soil. Unemployment, a mere 3.8 percent on Opening Day last April, is now 5.5 percent and rising. Ford fires 35,000 workers—its biggest layoff in two decades—and Houston-based energy giant Enron collapses in an accounting scandal. After a brief comeback, the stock market will hit a four-year low by July.
It’s with all this in mind that Don Fehr looks out at baseball’s owners and team executives in an airy conference room at the Arizona Biltmore hotel. Fehr is sitting at a table with his brother Steve, Gene Orza, and three players, all here at the behest of Bud Selig. “Many of the owners have never met you,” the Commissioner told Fehr. “It can only help us find a way to make a deal.”
It’s Thursday, January 17, more than three months since baseball’s labor contract expired, and not much has changed since November 6, when Selig announced his plan to eliminate two teams. With pitchers and catchers due to report in four weeks, Selig hasn’t moved off the proposal Fehr rejected in December.
Fehr doesn’t think today’s meeting will accomplish much, though anything that might help prevent a ninth straight stoppage of play is worth trying. Especially since there won’t be Cal Ripken, Mac and Sammy, and a Yankees three-peat to bail them out this time around. But what, Fehr wonders, can he possibly tell these owners that will help?
That Selig never gave MLB President Paul Beeston authorization to make a deal?
That Selig’s plan for contraction has once again turned the game’s players against the Commissioner?
That Selig’s intransigence means another strike is all but inevitable?
This is precisely what Fehr told the players at the union’s Executive Board meeting last month. “Expect the worst,” he advised them, even though the business of baseball has never been better. Just yesterday, the owners officially and unanimously approved the sale of the Red Sox and its cable network for $700 million—more than double the previous record price for a franchise, set just two years ago. John Henry and his partners were so eager to close the deal they agreed to give $30 million to local charities so Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly would stop asking why two higher offers were turned down.
Fehr decides it’s best just to clear the air.
“Negotiations on a new contract have always been contentious,” Fehr tells the owners. “We tried to avoid that by having secret talks with Paul Beeston and Rob Manfred, but Bud Selig halted those talks without so much as an explanation.”
Fehr looks to the back of the room, where Selig is pacing, as Bud usually does when others are speaking, and then over at Beeston, the only baseball official sitting at the table with him and his staff. He knows Selig will soon replace Beeston. Selig never cared much for Beeston’s friendly relationship with the union, and Beeston has long since tired of trying to get a straight answer from the Commissioner.
“We never received a counterproposal,” Fehr says. “Then you sprang contraction on the players after telling us you would not contract in 2002. That’s not the way we should do business.”
Still, Fehr tells them, the union is willing to overlook all this “in the interest of making a deal peacefully.”
He can almost hear all their eyes rolling.
Fehr can’t resist tweaking the Commissioner, so he walks his audience through the litany of bad press baseball has received since the end of the World Series. The fierce backlash over contraction. The news of a loan Pohlad made to Selig in 1995 that violated baseball’s rules. Calls for Selig to resign from Congressman John Conyers and politicians in Minnesota and Florida.
“We certainly hope,” Fehr says, “that this period will be brought to an end.”
When Fehr is done lecturing, Selig opens the floor for questions. And that’s when San Diego’s John Moores shows just how much tension remains between the owners and the union leader.
“Do you believe us when we tell you about the losses we have suffered?” the Padres owner asks, looking toward the three players—Tony Clark, Mark Loretta, and Rich Aurilia—sitting with Fehr.
Fehr begins to answer, but Moores instantly cuts him off.
“I want to hear what the players have to say,” Moores says tersely.
Selig jumps in quickly. “John,” he says, “they can answer your question however they want.”
Honestly, says Fehr, it’s hard to take your claims seriously when so much of your losses are accounting maneuvers. All three players nod in agreement, and more eyes roll. Only a few more questions are asked before Selig signals the session is about to end. “We are ready to make a deal,” Fehr says. “We just ask that you think about things from our point of view as well as your own.”
The meeting adjourns. Fehr and Selig meet the media separately, and any illusion of cooperation instantly disappears. Fehr is asked if the players will pledge not to strike. No, he says, “but a strike is considered a last resort.” Selig’s proposal to increase revenue sharing to 50 percent from 20 percent is simply too high, he says, and the demand for a permanent luxury tax is a real reach. “Players aren’t luxuries,” Fehr says.
Selig tells reporters he has no plans to lock out players when spring training opens next month, but he won’t take that option off the table, either. “You never rule anything out forever.” And contraction, he insists, is still in the picture.
But Selig tips his hand, saying that relocation is coming in the near future, with Washington the prime candidate. Translation: baseball will take possession of the Expos as soon as Henry and Montreal owner Jeff Loria agree on a price for the Marlins. The team will play this season in Montreal, then move to Washington in 2003—Selig’s promise to Baltimore owner Peter Angelos to stay out of the D.C. market be damned.
Everything falls in place for Selig in the next few weeks. On February 4, the Minnesota Supreme Court saves Selig from the embarrassment of calling off contraction when it rules the Twins must play the 2002 season in the Metrodome. “While the clubs would have preferred to contract for 2002,” Selig says with a straight face, “events outside of our direct control have required us to move the date of contraction to 2003.”
The owners approve the sale of the Marlins to Loria and make baseball’s purchase of the Expos official on February 12. That allows Selig to make a public relations splash by naming Omar Minaya the team’s GM—the game’s first Hispanic general manager—and Frank Robinson the new manager.
With the decks clear, contract talks are set to resume the first week of March with a slightly different look. Rob Manfred, long Selig’s back-channel conduit to labor talks, is now Bud’s lead negotiator. Bob DuPuy, who officially replaces the ousted Beeston on March 3 as president and COO, also has a seat at the table.
Negotiations open on March 4 and are civil at first, but things turn personal just one day later. A rumor circulating for weeks finally makes its way into the national media: sources say the players are considering a boycott of this season’s All-Star Game if a new labor agreement is not reached by the break.
The site of the game: Milwaukee.
The goal of the story: embarrass the Commissioner.
The tone of the 2002 labor talks has just been set.
George Steinbrenner strides into the crowded conference room at Legends Field, where a meeting of the Board of YankeeNets and several of its investors is about to start. There is a lengthy agenda for the three-year-old company, but it’s an item that’s not on the list that’s got everyone’s attention. It’s almost noon on March 19, the official launch day for the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network, and all eyes are soon riveted on the televisions placed around the room.
The screens turn Yankees blue, a countdown appears, and the final 10 seconds tick off before yielding to the familiar stentorian voice of Yankees PA announcer Bob Sheppard. “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen,” says the man who’s introduced every Yankees lineup for the past 50 years. “You’re watching the YES Network, the home of champions.”
As former CNN sports anchor Fred Hickman talks about one YES program after another, Steinbrenner knows exactly what he’s watching: a way to truly maximize the value of the Yankees.
“George,” YES CEO Leo Hindery says after Hickman’s 30-minute introduction is done and the Board meeting is set to begin. “This network is going to be around for a long time.”
Hindery and his new staff got YES up and running from scratch in just six months, but there were plenty of hurdles. The first came almost immediately, when Quadrangle, one of the two private equity firms financing the network, was unable to raise the funds it needed after the attacks of September 11 and pulled out seven days after the deal was announced. Goldman Sachs stepped up and put another $150 million into the deal, cementing their relationship with the Steinbrenners and the Yankees.
The biggest obstacle was and remains Chuck Dolan, who has been true to his word. Cablevision’s 3 million customers are not watching today’s broadcast, and they won’t see a single game this season. Dolan is refusing to pay the steep price YES is getting from the other cable companies in the metro area—$2 per subscriber per month—and he’s steadfastly refused to make the Yankees part of Cablevision’s basic package. Every Board member here today knows the battle with George’s friend from Cleveland will be won or lost in court, so there is still much work to do.
The war with Dolan will be costly—more than $70 million in lost revenue alone—but Steinbrenner now has a television network, which means the Yankees are no longer just a baseball team. They’re a reality TV show, and putting a star-driven championship team on the field has never been more important, no matter what restrictions Selig tries to put on them.
It’s a very different team that YES will showcase in this, the Yankees’ 100th season. Gone are Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, and Chuck Knoblauch, departing with 14 World Series rings among them. In their place are free agents Robin Ventura and Rondell White, rookie Nick Johnson, and the marquee attraction, Jason Giambi.
The Yankees were so eager to get Giambi’s big bat for the middle of their lineup that they were willing to overlook his almost daily misadventures at first base. Giambi has an average glove, limited range, and a scattershot arm. Yankees fans—and infielders—used to the Gold Glove of Don Mattingly and the dependable defense of Martinez are in for a shock.
The Yankees were also willing to grant a request made by Giambi’s agent: remove any mention of the word steroids from his contract. The Yankees now insert steroids language into every contract, a response to widespread suspicion about the use of the performance-enhancing drugs. The team granted Giambi’s request, confident the contract still contained language about the use of illegal drugs that could void the deal should Jason be found using steroids. And there’s little reason to think their decision will ever be made public.
The team will be stunned when it learns neither assumption is true.
Steinbrenner finally met the big first baseman on the first full day of workouts last month. He walked over to Giambi at the batting cage, hugged the man he will pay $120 million over the next seven years, and gave him some simple advice. “Just be yourself,” he told Giambi, who had to trim his hair and shave his scraggly beard to conform to Steinbrenner’s rules.
“Thanks for making a dream come true,” said Giambi, who cried when looking over at his father, John, during his New York media conference back in December. Father and son are lifelong Yankees fans; Giambi chose the No. 25 because the two numbers add up to seven, the number worn by his father’s idol, Mickey Mantle.
If Giambi simply matches his average production of the past three seasons—38 home runs, 114 RBI, a .330 batting average, and .458 on-base percentage—Steinbrenner will have few worries about the Yankees offense. And the only apparent problem with his pitching staff for the coming season is having six veteran starters for their five-man rotation. The Boss, who entertained writers in spring training with tall tales of his “semiretirement,” personally re-signed David Wells at year’s end, soon after Brian Cashman signed Sterling Hitchcock to join Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, and Orlando Hernandez.
Steinbrenner got plenty of flak for once again undermining his GM, but his decision looks smart two weeks into the season when Pettitte injures his elbow trying to put something extra on a fastball and winds up on the disabled list. Pettitte has battled elbow trouble since ’96, his second season as a Yankee, and he’s learned how to pitch in pain. But this time it’s different. The pain is too great, and two weeks on the DL turns to four, with no end in sight.
The Yankees send him to Dr. James Andrews, who assures Pettitte there is no structural damage and advises rest and continued rehab in Tampa. But Pettitte isn’t sure that’s enough and sends for Brian McNamee, whom Cashman fired at the end of last season for recruiting players to use him as a personal trainer. Clemens hired McNamee to train him this offseason, often inviting Pettitte to join him in the workouts, and now Andy has a special request.
“Dude, I’m hurt pretty bad,” he tells McNamee. “You said human growth hormone can heal tissue fast. I think I want to try it.”
“Andy, are you sure?” McNamee asks.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m making a lot of money,” Pettitte says. “I need to get back.”
Pettitte gets four shots of HGH from McNamee over the next two days. But his pain persists, and it will be mid-June before he rejoins the Yankees.
While Pettitte mends, Giambi starts slowly and finds out just how demanding Yankees fans can be. He hears the boos in the home opener—his fourth game as a Yankee—when he grounds into a double play with two runners on base. The boos get louder when he strikes out in his next two at bats, and a few chants of “Tino, Tino” are mixed in when he hits a dribbler in front of the plate. A fly out in the 8th inning of a 4–0 Yankees win leaves Giambi at 2 for 16 and still looking for his first RBI.
An old friend gives Giambi a call later that night with a little advice. “Hey, just relax,” says Mark McGwire, who retired last November after two injury-filled seasons. “You’re too good a player. Just go about your game.”
Giambi is still using Deca-Durabolin, the same powerful steroid he used in Oakland, and his bat clicks into gear in May. Giambi hits his fifth home run of the young season in a 9–2 win over the A’s on May 2, Torre’s 600th win with the Yankees. He blasts a grand slam through the driving rain in the 14th inning at the Stadium on May 17, wiping out a three-run Twins lead to give the Yankees a wild 13–12 win. On May 27, Giambi hits a pair of home runs in a 10–6 win over the White Sox.
In 28 games in May, Giambi bats .340, with 10 doubles, 24 RBI, and 10 home runs. This is the big bopper Steinbrenner expected. And the Yankees are winning—they’re 36–19 by month’s end, two behind Boston in the AL East—and their 87 home runs put them on pace to break the team’s record of 240, set 41 years ago.
“It’s nice to have that weapon,” Torre says. “You get behind and, ‘Boom.’ It’s something we haven’t had in the last several years. But I still don’t want to rely on that.”
Maybe not. But Torre’s boss isn’t complaining. Home runs make for good television, and Steinbrenner and his YankeeNets partners now have a network to think about, too.
Ken Caminiti shifts in his seat as the reporter from Sports Illustrated reviews the ground rules for their interview one more time. Caminiti’s known Tom Verducci for a number of years, and when the SI baseball writer called a few days back and asked if he’d be willing to talk about steroid use in baseball, Caminiti wasn’t surprised. It’s only a matter of time before someone talks openly about the worst-kept secret in baseball, he figured. Might as well be him.
It’s early April, the first spring Caminiti hasn’t been on a major league baseball field in 15 years, and life without baseball has not been easy. Hell, life with baseball was never easy for him, either. The Braves released him on November 6. Eight days later Houston police opened the door to his room at a Ramada Limited hotel, smelled crack cocaine burning, and arrested Caminiti and two younger men. All three were charged with possession of the drug.
He pleaded guilty as charged on March 21, and State District Judge Bill Harmon told Caminiti he was getting a big break: three years’ probation, with orders to attend weekly therapy sessions and continue the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program he’d already started. “You’ve committed your last offense,” Harmon told the 38-year-old. “You’ve had your last drink. You’ve had your last controlled substance.”
And now Caminiti’s in his house in Houston, ready to talk about one of the controlled substances he took while playing baseball. He’s already told Verducci he won’t talk about other players. But he will speak on the record about what he did and why he did it.
“Okay,” says Verducci, holding out his digital recorder. “If you’re ready, I’ll turn this on and we can get started.”
“Sure,” says Caminiti, and he begins telling Verducci about his use of steroids. About how he started injecting the drug in 1996, the year he won his MVP with the Padres, and how he never stopped. About coming to spring training “as big as an ox” in ’98, the season he led San Diego to the World Series. About how the drug changed him and how it’s changed the game.
“At first I felt like a cheater,” he says. “But I looked around, and everybody was doing it. Back then you had to go and find it in Mexico or someplace. Now it’s everywhere.”
Caminiti talks about how steroids made him feel stronger and faster and how the drug gave him confidence and focus. How he could swing with almost no effort and “crush the ball 450 feet.” About how he doesn’t believe an asterisk should be placed beside his name and the 239 home runs he hit. “I’ve made a ton of mistakes,” Caminiti says. “I don’t think using steroids is one of them.”
What would he tell younger players? “I can’t say, ‘Don’t do it,’ not when the guy next to you is as big as a house and he’s going to take your job.”
How many players are using steroids now? “It’s no secret what’s going on in baseball—at least half the guys are using steroids. The guys who want to protect themselves by lying have that right. But I’ve got nothing to hide.”
The two men talk straight through the afternoon. Caminiti talks about the price he paid, the torn tendons and pulled muscles that came from getting too big too fast. He talks about his estranged wife, too. The only good thing about being out of baseball, he says, is he can make the 45-minute drive to Nancy’s house and see their three daughters more often.
Verducci tells him Sports Illustrated has been working on this story for almost three months and that dozens of players, team executives, and trainers have talked about what they’ve seen. “You’ve got guys in their late 30s, almost 40, throwing the ball 96 to 99, and they never threw that hard before,” Texas pitcher Kenny Rogers told SI. “I’m sorry, that’s not natural evolution.” Says Arizona’s Curt Schilling, “I know plenty of guys now are mixing steroids with human growth hormone. Those guys are pretty obvious.”
But Rogers and Schilling don’t name any users. No one does. And Caminiti is the only player willing to admit he used performance-enhancing drugs.
“This is going to be pretty big, isn’t it?” Caminiti says.
“Yes, it is,” Verducci answers.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” Caminiti replies.
Caminiti is right—the story is big, and the reaction to his words is swift and predictable.
Fans who rushed to fill stadiums and watch their heroes crush batting practice homers now complain about a record book rendered meaningless and wonder which performances they can trust. Writers who just four seasons ago gushed over McGwire’s 19-inch biceps now point fingers at oversized players and speculate about which ones are cheating.
Senator John McCain, who voted to deregulate the supplement industry eight years ago—which resulted in amphetamine- and steroid-laced products popping up on health food store shelves everywhere—quickly calls for hearings. And owners who profited so handsomely from the steroid-fueled game—including the one sitting in the Commissioner’s office—bang the table for testing after hiding behind the union’s privacy concerns for most of a decade.
Caminiti quickly tries to walk back his estimate of the number of players using steroids, but it is too late. Reporters now start almost every interview by asking if a player is one out of every two major leaguers using steroids. Jose Canseco upped the ante just days after the SI story, confirming that he had also used steroids. The former MVP claims in mid-May that 85 percent of the game’s players were users, too, and promises to tell all in a book he plans to write.
Selig was worried about a scandal even before Caminiti came clean and had asked Manfred to put a testing proposal on the table in March. This was something management did not do in 1996, despite the Commissioner’s subsequent—and increasingly frequent—claims to the contrary. Manfred’s proposal bans steroids and Andro, and requires three random tests a year for all major league players. Repeat offenders would be disciplined, but results would be kept confidential.
The union still opposed testing but knew it had to respond to Manfred’s proposal. And that’s when Gene Orza started talking to Don Fehr about survey testing—where players would be tested but not identified—to determine what percentage of players were really taking performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). All results would be kept private, but if an agreed-upon percentage of players tested positive in 2003, it would trigger random testing with penalties.
Now, with management pushing hard for testing and chatter about steroids at an all-time high, the union schedules a meeting with every team to get the players’ views. Nothing has divided players more than the subject of testing, even players who want no part of PEDs. Much of their concern revolves around trust: Will the owners keep the results confidential? Will they use positive tests to get rid of players they no longer want and look the other way with their stars? Who will conduct the tests? Will there be an appeals process? And can they be sure the government will never take possession of the results?
Fehr has taken plenty of criticism for his steadfast stand against drug testing, but this issue is far more complicated than most people are willing to admit, inside the game and out. How can you tell players to stop taking legal supplements, even though you know some of them may contain illegal substances? How many veterans have heard GMs tell them to “get bigger” because the game relies on home runs now, not singles and doubles? What do you tell the many Hispanic players who grew up using steroids—which are legal in their countries—when they return home to play winter ball?
These and other issues are on Fehr’s mind when he flies to Washington on June 18 to appear with Manfred before a Senate Commerce subcommittee overseeing baseball. McCain uses his opening statement to say he is greatly concerned about baseball, but he’s “more concerned about the effect this recent spate of publicity has on young athletes all over America.” Manfred calls steroid use “a high-priority item for us” and says MLB has been waiting three months for the union to respond to its drug testing proposal.
Subcommittee chairman Byron Dorgan (D-ND) says he doesn’t want to see baseball become a game in which players are forced to “engage in the use of performance-enhancing drugs in order to make it.” Fehr says all talk of testing comes down to one word: privacy. “The Players Association has always believed that one should not invade the privacy of an individual without cause related to conduct,” he says, “merely because of his status as a baseball player.”
Both Manfred and Fehr ask Congress to look into the problems it caused by deregulating the supplement industry. “With all due respect,” Fehr says, “if children are using substances like Androstenedione, it is in large part because 11-year-olds can walk into stores and buy them. Congress can do something about that.
“It doesn’t answer the question of what you do in baseball. But I respectfully suggest it’s a much bigger question.”
Fehr’s suggestion does little to pacify McCain, who wonders if ballplayers realize the credibility of their sport is at stake. “Players read the newspapers, they watch television,” Fehr answers. “They understand the significance that this particular controversy has.”
Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) is more pointed. “Do members of your union understand if they oppose mandatory drug testing they could be inviting congressional action and that it would probably be more draconian than a voluntary program amongst the players and owners?”
Yes, Fehr says, they do. “I can assure you that as the players debate and discuss this among themselves, the views of everyone will be taken into consideration,” he says.
Fehr leaves Washington without committing to drug testing, but he realizes once team meetings resume that the mood of the players has changed. Even players who remain opposed to testing realize public pressure—and the politicians—will not disappear without a drug testing agreement. On July 7, USA Today runs a CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll showing 86 percent of baseball fans think players should be tested for steroids and 80 percent think steroids were a factor in many of the records that have recently fallen.
That same day, USA Today releases another poll showing 79 percent of major league players favor independent testing for steroids. “I don’t have a problem with getting tested because I have nothing to hide,” Derek Jeter tells the newspaper. “Steroids are a big issue. If anything like a home run or any injury happens, people say it’s steroids. That’s not fair.”
Not every player agrees with Jeter, including Yankees player rep Mike Stanton. “It is not as easy as saying yes or no; there’s legal stuff,” Stanton says. But Fehr and Orza have heard enough. They’ll run Orza’s survey idea past the players on the Executive Board later this month, and if the Board doesn’t have strong objections, Fehr will put it on the bargaining table in early August.
The plan is not perfect, but it’s one the union leaders can live with. At worst, it gives steroid users time to get off the stuff. But both men fail to anticipate just how many players take the game one season at a time. Steroids are making some of them rich and keeping many others in the game. If these players fail their tests, the only consequence might be random drug testing next season. They’ll deal with that if and when the time comes.
Besides, most players are confident the union will be there to protect them. It always has, and there is no reason to believe that will change.