GENE ORZA LOOKS over at Rob Manfred, curious as to why baseball’s Vice President for Labor is suddenly pecking away at his BlackBerry. It’s November 11, and the two men are sitting with a handful of Yankees and union officials in a Hyatt hotel conference room in Tampa for the second day of Bubba Trammell’s arbitration hearing. The Yankees stopped paying Trammell when the outfielder walked out at midseason, a decision Trammell claims he made for medical reasons. But Orza is sure whatever is holding Manfred’s attention now has little to do with what the doctor on the stand is saying.
Moments later Manfred hands Orza a slip of paper. He’s just received an email from Comprehensive Drug Testing (CDT), the company running baseball’s drug testing program. The results are in, Manfred wrote. As per the labor agreement, no names were given, just the number of positive results, and Manfred’s already done the math. CDT says 104 players tested positive, more than enough to surpass the 5 percent threshold needed to trigger random testing next season.
There’s a small smile on Manfred’s face. From his perspective, this is about as good as it could get: the number of positive results is high enough to get the testing program the Commissioner wanted but low enough to prevent the perception that baseball has a drug epidemic on its hands.
The two men meet in the hallway when arbitrator Shyam Das calls a break.
“When do you want to announce?” Manfred says.
“Stop,” replies Orza. “You know we have to do more than just read the results.”
Orza and Manfred inform their superiors and soon begin the process of validating the test results. Orza is convinced that many players are still taking Andro and other steroid-laced supplements even though the union gave each player a list of legal products that would turn up positive for steroids. The question is whether there will be enough of these positives and other questionable results to push the total below 60, the number needed to trigger penalty testing.
For two days the union man and his MLB counterpart work with their own experts and those from Quest Diagnostics, the lab that conducted the urine tests. Manfred agrees to reject eight positives, leaving 96 on his list. Orza insists the number is 83, though that is still far above the threshold. He’s not surprised, just disappointed. Orza figured there were players taking steroids, though far fewer than Ken Caminiti or Jose Canseco claimed. He just thought the players would kick the habit once testing began.
Clearly, he was wrong.
The news is announced in a conference call on November 13. Bud Selig, who’s in Milwaukee working to put out a very different kind of fire, releases a statement. “Hopefully, this will, over time, allow us to completely eradicate the use of performance enhancement substances in baseball,” the Commissioner says.
A now conciliatory Manfred tries to put a good face on the results of baseball’s first drug test. “A positive rate of 5 percent is hardly the sign that you have rampant use of anything,” he says. “From our perspective, it’s still a problem. We’d like it to be at zero.”
A player failing next season’s random testing will receive treatment, education about the drug he abused, and will be subject to more testing. On a second positive, a player will be publicly identified and face a 15-day suspension or a $10,000 fine. The penalties escalate until a fifth positive merits a one-year suspension—unpaid, like all suspensions—or a $100,000 fine.
“Plainly, many of the widely publicized claims regarding steroid use in the sport turn out to have been grossly uninformed, as do the suggestions that the agreement with the clubs was designed to avoid a penalty-based testing regimen,” Orza says on the conference call.
Orza drafts a memo to the 1,198 players tested, explaining what’s taken place and what it all means, then mails it out the following day. The drug agreement makes it clear that both MLB and the union will supervise the timely destruction of the players’ test results held at CDT in Long Beach, California, and the urine samples at Quest’s Las Vegas facility, though no exact time frame is specified. It’s a busy time of the offseason for Orza and Manfred, with free agency under way, salary arbitration looming, and both sides preparing for their Winter Meetings. Somehow they’ll have to squeeze in a trip out to Long Beach and Las Vegas.
But on November 19, Manfred makes a call to Orza that changes everyone’s plans. “The government just served us with a subpoena at our office for the test results of the 11 players connected to Balco,” says Manfred.
The feds make a mistake—the evidence they seek is not at the Commissioner’s office but in drug testing labs in two other states. But Manfred and Orza know they have a new problem on their hands. Phone calls fly between the two all day. They share many of the same concerns. This subpoena may well shatter the promise of confidentiality—the major concern even for players who supported testing—especially in light of how eager the government was to serve a grand jury subpoena to Giambi in the spotlight of the postseason.
The loss of privacy for these 11 players could end the drug testing program in its infancy. It’s one thing to ask players to give urine samples to their employers under the guarantee of confidentiality. It’s quite another for the government to gain possession of them. No one knows what the feds plan to do with these tests, but it’s hard to see anything good coming from this.
Then there’s the matter of their contractual obligation to destroy the test samples. Both sides contact outside counsel with experience in criminal law: MLB again turns to Morgan, Lewis, and the union talks with the San Francisco firm Keker & Van Nest, who’ve had success dealing with the U.S. Attorney’s office overseeing the Balco investigation.
The answer Selig and Fehr hear from their advisers is just what they’d been told to expect: once the subpoena is served, everything requested is considered evidence in a criminal investigation and cannot be touched. And that goes for the results and samples of all 1,198 players tested, not just the 11 connected to Balco.
By now, everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before the investigators turn up at the right places with new subpoenas. And they’re all aware of the worst-case scenario: a subpoena for the test results and samples for all 1,198 players.
But it won’t be long before Selig and Fehr discover things can get even worse. Much worse.
Bud Selig walks into his corner office, sits down behind his cluttered desk, then turns and stares out his window at the cold, dark waters of Lake Michigan. The news of the government subpoena yesterday was not good, no question about it. But right now, it’s hard for Selig to see how things could get any worse than they are here in Milwaukee.
Simply put, the last two weeks have been a living hell: just about everyone in his hometown—damn, his entire home state—seems to have turned against him and Wendy. The reason: Brewers President Ulice Payne broke ranks two weeks ago and confirmed reports that the team plans to slash its payroll and trade away its best player. The news set off a firestorm that shows no sign of abating.
At least Payne’s messy divorce from the Brewers is almost complete. All that remains is the final wording of the nondisclosure clause in his separation papers. Payne has already done enough damage with just one story, and there’s no reason to let him say anything more.
It all started late on Friday, November 7, when Selig was stunned by a call from a reporter asking him to respond to sources claiming the Brewers are planning big budget cuts—claims, he told Selig, that Payne already confirmed. It was not hard to figure out that Payne was the probable source. Damn, Bud knew Ulice was unhappy—he’d heard all about the memo Payne sent to the Board on October 23 strongly questioning the proposed budget cuts. And he was pretty sure Ulice knew of Selig’s unhappiness with him.
But he never thought the former Foley & Lardner law partner would take his complaints public.
“I can’t comment on the team’s finances or budget,” Selig told the reporter, though he did point out that the Brewers were just one of 15 teams cutting payroll this offseason. Of course, he didn’t mention the planned cuts would reduce the Brewers’ payroll to $30 million, the second-lowest in the game. Two days later, the story appeared on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s front page under a headline that made Selig cringe. CUTS MAY IMPERIL BREWERS ON FIELD, it read. SHRINKING PAYROLL WILL MAKE IT TOUGH TO REVIVE.
The details were ugly, and Payne’s comments made it all that much worse. He confirmed that the Brewers Board approved slashing the payroll by a full 25 percent. And that the reduction meant the team would trade Richie Sexson, their best and—at $8.6 million a year—most expensive player. It may also mean the exit of Geoff Jenkins, the team’s only other All-Star, who will earn $8.25 million in 2004.
In return, the Brewers want low-paid prospects with—they hope—big upsides. The Brewers, the newspaper wrote, were starting over. Again. “We don’t envision a significant ramp-up until our young prospects are here and we’re able to fill around them,” Payne explained. “There was no talk of significant payroll increases in the foreseeable future.”
But didn’t the Brewers promise a competitive team if the taxpayers financed Miller Park? “All I can say is the Brewers ramped up their payroll when Miller Park opened,” Payne told the paper. “But the wins didn’t go up and attendance went down. In essence, the plan failed. So now there is a new plan.”
Does he worry that Brewers fans will feel betrayed? After all, the team raised average ticket prices 54.6 percent when Miller Park opened and, under this new plan, will have cut its payroll 40 percent over the past two seasons. “I hear from the public and the fans on a regular basis,” Payne said. “That’s my main concern.”
Selig could only manage a sad laugh. After this story, Payne’s only concern is the best deal his lawyer can cut for the remaining four years of his five-year guaranteed contract.
The first two days following the Journal Sentinel’s story were eerily quiet. The Brewers issued a brief statement on November 11, insisting everyone in management—including Payne—signed off on next season’s budget and telling fans, “We are more optimistic about the future of our club than ever before.” And that’s when the backlash finally hit—with a vengeance.
The fans flooded the talk shows with phone calls and left hundreds of posts on the Journal Sentinel website. Their message was clear:
They want Ulice to stay. And they want Bud and Wendy to go.
“You can’t win with the current ownership,” wrote a former season-ticket holder. “Ulice was a breath of fresh air. To lose him is to dump on the customers one more time.” Said another Miller Park regular, “It is now obvious that the owners no longer care to compete, they just want my money. I feel like I have been kicked in the gut.”
The politicians turned out in full force as well. Former Governor and current Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson weighed in from Washington. “The taxpayers stepped up, built the stadium, and kept Wisconsin a major league state,” he said. “Yet the Brewers have not upgraded the quality of their team.” Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker said he feared the cost-cutting and Payne’s expected exit would put the team in a tailspin and announced he’d ask the county attorney to find ways to pressure the Brewers to change course.
“The Seligs just scammed the living dickens out of the people of this state,” said State Senator Mike Ellis, a longtime Selig foe. And Assembly Speaker John Gard called for Wisconsin’s independent Legislative Audit Bureau to examine the Brewers’ books. “The taxpayers of this state have made a multimillion-dollar investment in this team and taken the club’s decisions on faith,” Gard said. “This week’s revelations of a ‘fire sale’ have shaken this faith, and it is time for us to look at the books and review how the team is managing its finances.”
The media insisted the Commissioner is still calling the shots for the Brewers while labeling both Selig and his daughter incapable of building a decent team. They sang Payne’s praises, mourned his likely departure, and told the Seligs it was time to leave. “This team needs an exorcism,” bellowed the city’s leading radio host Charlie Sykes, just one of many who called for the Seligs to sell the team.
Selig hovered over the storm in silence—at least publicly—leaving it to his daughter to battle back. Four days after Payne’s revelations, Selig-Prieb finally sat down with the Journal Sentinel reporters. She slammed those who claimed the Commissioner is still running the team. “He absolutely is my father, we can agree on that,” she said. “But does he influence my thinking? No, he doesn’t.”
Is there any chance her father will decide to sell the team? “No,” she said. “Not at all.”
The uproar intensified the very next day, when the Journal Sentinel revealed the details of a report given to prospective investors in July, outlining the team’s plans to cut the budget for every season through 2006. Whatever hold the Seligs once had on their fans was officially gone.
And now Selig is at his desk while his team’s lawyers negotiate the final details of Payne’s departure: almost $3 million to buy out the remaining four years on his contract plus his options to buy into the team. And an airtight nondisclosure clause. The two sides reach an agreement later this day, and both the Brewers and Payne take the high road when it is announced on November 21.
“On behalf of the Board, the club, and its management, we thank Ulice for his service and wish him the best in the future,” the Brewers’ statement reads.
“As I leave my position today as president of the Milwaukee Brewers, I do so with a sense of pride in what the team has accomplished,” Payne writes in a statement of his own.
The Brewers announce a search for Payne’s replacement, but much will happen before it even gets started. Sexson is traded on December 1, the centerpiece of a nine-player deal that brings back rookie pitcher Chris Capuano and journeyman shortstop Craig Counsell from Arizona. The Seligs agree to share a portion of the team’s books with three of the city’s leading businessmen, but government officials push for and will eventually get a state audit of the Brewers’ finances.
“We’re looking for somebody who combines credibility and integrity but has demonstrated management skills,” says John Canning, the Brewers Board member in charge of the search for a new team president. “We’re going to be deliberate. There is no timetable.”
Which is just fine with Selig, who has another search in mind: he’s about to start looking for the next owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.
George Steinbrenner, looking a little pale and more than a little sad, is walking by himself into the Church of the Palms in Sarasota. It’s Saturday, December 27, 10 days since his good friend Otto Graham died from an aneurysm, and Steinbrenner is joining Graham’s wife, three children, and about 100 other relatives and friends for a memorial service to say their good-byes.
George grew up idolizing Graham, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Browns to three titles when George was a teenager in Cleveland. “He’s a god in Cleveland,” Steinbrenner would often say about the man almost nine years his senior who would become a close friend. The two men played golf together, laughed and shared stories at banquets, and always made sure to support each other’s charity events.
Steinbrenner looked up to Graham, and he was saddened—and a bit terrified—when Graham was diagnosed with early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in 2001, the same affliction that robbed George’s father of his mind and dignity before his death in 1983. Steinbrenner knew Graham was in poor health, so he wasn’t surprised on December 17 when Otto’s wife Beverly called from her husband’s room at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
It’s bad, she told him before holding the phone up to Graham’s ear. You hang in there, George told his friend, who was too weak to speak. But Steinbrenner could hear his friend breathing, and Beverly told him that Otto’s heart rate jumped while he was listening. A few hours later, Graham was gone.
Steinbrenner knows his friend’s death is a wake-up call, a sign to slow down and enjoy life before it’s too late. He’s 73, and he’s already attended too many funerals these last few years. But George has never run faster, and he’s hard-pressed to see how that’s going to change any time soon.
After all, he’s finally ready to build a new stadium—and foot the $800 million bill. Randy Levine and Steve Swindal better be right that deducting the loan payments for the construction costs will save him a third of his revenue sharing bill, which is costing him $40 million this year. And he just got his luxury tax bill: $11.8 million. Damn Bud Selig!
Steinbrenner’s more than pleased that the YankeeNets partnership will soon end—the lawyers started working on that on December 8—but he’ll have to wait until the spring to know if an arbitrator will force Cablevision to carry his YES Network on its basic tier. Damn Chuck Dolan!
And how’s he supposed to slow down when he’s still at war with Brian Cashman? The two have been at odds all year but never more so than this month, when George signed veteran outfielders Gary Sheffield (35) and Kenny Lofton (36) without involving his general manager, who was close to a deal with 28-year-old All-Star right fielder Vladimir Guerrero. Steinbrenner’s happy with Cashman’s deals for Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez to replace Clemens, who just retired, and Andy Pettitte, who just signed with Houston. And he thinks signing Tom Gordon to set up Mariano Rivera is smart. But how the hell did Cash lose Curt Schilling to the Red Sox?
No, the Boss is not happy with his general manager, even if he just extended his contract. Sure, he told Cashman in July to forget about his $1.15 million option for 2005, and said it again during their shouting match in Game 2 of the ALDS. But that was before he heard about the New York Post story on December 14, the one reporting that Cashman was telling people he was looking forward to getting out from under Steinbrenner the minute his contract ran out at the end of next season.
A day later, Steinbrenner instructed his public relations man Howard Rubenstein to tell the media he was picking up Cashman’s option for 2005. Cashman was in his backyard building a snowman with his two young kids when the Post’s George King called him. “You have any comment about Steinbrenner picking up your option?” King asked him. “Well, the New York Post is officially the one telling me, because I know nothing about it,” Cashman answered. “So I have no comment.”
So no, Steinbrenner hasn’t cut back this month. If anything, he’s put more pressure on everyone, including—especially—himself. But Steinbrenner pushes all this out of his mind as he walks into the crowded church. The service is touching, and now there’s a slide show. George is standing when they show slides of him with Otto, a lump forming in his throat.
Graham’s daughter Sandy is just starting to talk when George feels light-headed and begins to sway. He staggers a step or two, gropes for a chair, misses, and falls forward, his head slamming the chair with a loud thud before he lands facedown on the carpeted floor.
The room instantly turns to chaos, with people yelling, others calling 911, and most everyone crowding around Steinbrenner. A nurse and paramedic attending the service push their way to George, who is ghostly white and unconscious as they loosen his shirt and tie and prop up his legs. It’s almost two minutes before George opens his eyes, and the color returns to his face as he slowly realizes he must have passed out.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he says when paramedics from Sarasota Memorial arrive and help him onto a gurney. He’s embarrassed as he’s wheeled out to a waiting ambulance while everyone applauds. He’s given intravenous fluids and an electrocardiogram in the ambulance and is in a chatty mood when he arrives at the emergency room. “Thanks for the service,” he tells the medics. “It was very good.”
Steinbrenner spends the day taking medical tests, telling family and friends crowding into his room that he feels great, and taking calls. “You all right?” asks Randy Levine when he finally gets through the hospital switchboard. “Well, I’m not dead yet,” George jokes. “I’m fine, I’m fine. It was just hot.”
But the family is concerned. George has never liked doctors and rarely visits one, and his knees are badly in need of repair, but his constitution has always been every bit as steely as his will. That’s why they were all surprised when he took ill at the World Series, getting so sick he lost his balance and fell. And now this.
Steinbrenner’s unhappy when he’s told he has to stay the night at the hospital, and unhappier still when told he will not be discharged until early evening the following day. He spends the day watching football, instructing Rubenstein on what to tell the media, and talking to Dr. Andrew Boyer, his personal physician, who traveled up from Tampa to oversee care of his longtime patient.
Boyer crafts his own statement for the media. “George Steinbrenner recovered in a few minutes and he’s been doing well ever since,” it reads. “He has had a very extensive cardiac and neurological workup. He’s feeling well, and his general health is excellent.”
Boyer is told there are about a dozen reporters camped in front of the hospital, some who arrived before dawn. Several are sitting in lawn chairs when Steinbrenner’s doctor walks out to speak with them.
“He’s doing great,” Boyer says. “All the tests were normal.”
You’ve said Steinbrenner has never experienced anything like this before, says one reporter. Can you tell us what may have caused him to collapse?
“Sometimes in a stressful situation,” Boyer says, “you just pass out.”
Given all the stress Steinbrenner will face come the New Year, it’s anyone’s guess if—or when—this could happen again.