IT HAS TO be about more than just Barry Bonds.”
Bud Selig looks over at the courtly gentleman sitting to his right, the one who’s just brought the conversation in the room to a halt: George Mitchell. It’s the third week of March, and the two old friends are in the 31st-floor conference room next to the Commissioner’s office at Major League Baseball headquarters. Selig asked Mitchell to meet with him and his inner circle in New York to discuss leading an investigation into steroid use by the game’s most visible player.
But the Senator, it seems, thinks Selig needs to aim higher.
“It really can’t be a Barry issue, it has to be the whole sport,” Mitchell tells Selig and his team. “No investigation will be successful unless you expand it. It’s the only way it will have any credibility.”
Selig thought he’d put baseball’s steroids problem behind him when he nailed Don Fehr to the wall last fall, forcing the union leader to accept the toughest testing program in pro sports. Fehr was so damned determined to protect the players that Bud is convinced the public now understands that he’s the one dedicated to cleaning up the sport.
But that all changed three weeks ago, when Sports Illustrated ran an excerpt from a book called Game of Shadows. “The Truth,” as the magazine humbly billed the story, traces Bonds’ alleged use of steroids all the way back to 1998. Stories about Bonds and steroids are nothing new: the government’s still pushing for a perjury charge over the Giants star’s 2003 grand jury testimony. And Selig has already been asking baseball’s lawyers if he can suspend Barry should the player be indicted.
This, however, is different. Game of Shadows is a tawdry tale of popping pills and backside injections, angry mood swings and ugly outbreaks of acne, petty jealousies and racial tension. Many of the headlines come from Bonds’ former mistress Kimberly Bell, who speaks in great detail about the downside of the drugs she says Barry uses: the threats he left on her answering machine, tapes of which she put in a drawer for safekeeping. The bones in his skull that grew too large. The testicles that got too small. The periodic bouts of sexual dysfunction.
The upside, however, is undeniable: The home run record in 2001. The 136 home runs in the three seasons after that, leaving Bonds just 53 short of overtaking Hank Aaron as baseball’s all-time home run king. His first batting title when he hit .370 in 2002 at age 38. As team doctors told Selig back in 2000, there’s a reason why players are taking these drugs—they work.
The salacious stories left Selig disgusted. “It’s even worse than I thought,” he told friends. It left him frustrated, too, because this is what everyone around baseball is talking about. Not about the record attendance and revenues posted on Selig’s watch a year ago, records sure to be broken again this year. Or the multiple bidders who are eagerly vying for the once-moribund Nationals franchise. Or the arrival of stars like Ryan Howard and Justin Morneau, CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee—and all the other attractive young players who have the TV networks offering record contracts to broadcast Selig’s game.
No, all anyone is talking about now is Bonds and the dirty little secrets revealed in Game of Shadows. Especially down in Washington. It was only a matter of days after “The Truth” hit the newsstands that Selig started getting calls from his old friends in Congress, who told the Commissioner that if he didn’t do something about Barry Bonds, they would do it for him.
And that’s why Selig is sitting in this conference room today with his three top lieutenants—Bob DuPuy, Rob Manfred, and Frank Coonelly—and outside counsel Tom Carlucci, listening to Mitchell outline how they should address their latest steroids crisis. And it’s why Selig is promising Mitchell a free hand to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
“Anything you need to do, you do,” Selig tells the 72-year-old Senator. “George, if you take this job, we’re not going to tie your hands in any way. You will have carte blanche.”
No one in the room is arguing with Selig—that debate has already been waged and lost. DuPuy, Manfred, and others close to Selig advised him to ride this one out. An investigation was sure to unhinge the players union after it accepted not one but two revisions to the drug testing program in the last 14 months. Their new program is plenty tough. With negotiations for a new contract set to begin in just a few weeks, the timing of this investigation could not be worse.
More than a few of the game’s owners are sure to be displeased, too, they told Selig. What owner hasn’t looked the other way at some point over the last decade when their GM signed a player they had every reason to believe was using steroids? And it would be hard to find many owners who want to pay Mitchell millions just to clean up the Commissioner’s legacy and do nothing for their bottom line. They don’t mind vouching for Bud, but shelling out big bucks to do so isn’t anyone’s idea of a good investment.
Selig keeps saying this investigation will give them closure on steroids, but no one really buys that. Not with the government still holding on to the 2003 drug tests. Not with prosecutors still chasing after Bonds. And not with the rewards of using steroids still outweighing the risks for their players.
But Selig ended those discussions the way he always does when he grows weary of listening. “Nobody elected you the ninth Commissioner of baseball,” he told them. And this Commissioner has so many chits built up that he doesn’t have to ask the owners for permission to launch an investigation.
Bonds has never been one of the Commissioner’s favorites. Selig admired Mark McGwire, inviting him to sit in his box for the 1998 World Series and throw out the first pitch in Game 4. And he adored Sammy Sosa, twice going to Sammy’s birthday party at the player’s home in the Dominican Republic. But he’s always been wary of Bonds, who assured Selig a year ago that all the stories about him and steroids were untrue.
Selig told Bonds he’d be tougher on him if he lied, and he meant it. So soon after reading the SI story, Selig called the San Francisco–based Carlucci, who’d been closely monitoring the case at Bud’s behest for more than a year. Put a plan together to investigate the Giants star and a team of lawyers to carry it out, Selig told him.
At a meeting in New York a week later, Carlucci told Selig the investigation needed a big name to sell it. George Mitchell, Selig quickly decided, was his first and best choice.
“I’ll call him,” Selig said. “I’m sure I can get him to do it.”
Mitchell had just walked out of a hotel room on his way to chair a Disney stockholders’ meeting when Selig called with his latest request. “You know I’ve never said no to anything you’ve ever asked from me,” Mitchell told him. “But if I do it, I’ll need complete independence.”
Selig said of course, Mitchell agreed to meet in New York, and now the Commissioner and his staff are talking with the Senator, assuring him once again that he’ll have free rein if he accepts the job. “George,” Selig says, “you can follow the evidence wherever it goes.”
Selig tells Mitchell he’ll have access to owners, management, and anyone working for Major League Baseball—from managers and coaches to trainers and clubhouse attendants. The players are another story. Mitchell won’t have subpoena power, and everyone in the room knows that getting the union to cooperate is all but hopeless, especially with the Balco prosecutors just itching to investigate anyone with a connection to steroids.
But Mitchell is on good terms with Fehr, whom he asked to help straighten out the bid-rigging scandal for the Salt Lake City Olympics when he ran that investigation. “Maybe I can persuade Don it’s in his best interests to cooperate so we can get this all behind us,” offers Mitchell, who said he’d reach out to Fehr. “I’m hopeful.”
The Senator raises the subject of his conflicts of interest: he’s chairman of Disney, which owns MLB’s broadcast partner ESPN, and he sits on the Board of the Boston Red Sox. And he’s been Bud’s friend for years. Selig dismisses each concern. Who’s going to question the man his peers voted the most ethical person in Congress?
Mitchell says his contacts with Congress are still strong, especially with Henry Waxman, the man most interested in chasing after every steroids story. Carlucci says he’ll introduce Mitchell to Kevin Ryan, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco overseeing the Balco inquiry, and to Matt Parrella, the prosecutor running the investigation itself.
There are still a lot of questions to work out. Will they reveal names if they learn of players using drugs? That will be Mitchell’s call, though no one in the room doubts his decision will be yes. Will guilty players be disciplined? That one’s up to Bud. Can Mitchell promise to keep whatever he’s told confidential? Only inside baseball—the government can still subpoena whatever it wants.
Selig asks Mitchell if he’s sure he has time to take this on. Yes, Mitchell tells him, but he’ll want to bring in another lawyer from his firm DLA Piper to work with Carlucci and his team. “Whatever you need,” the Commissioner tells him.
Mitchell says he’d like a day to think it over, but Selig is hardly surprised when his friend calls back and accepts. News of the investigation is already beginning to leak by the time the media is called to baseball’s office on March 30 to hear all the details.
Selig and Mitchell sit side by side at the center of the dais, both in dark blue blazers and starched white shirts. The Commissioner opens, telling the crowded room that he’s asked the Senator to get to the bottom of baseball’s drug problem once and for all. Game of Shadows was a tipping point, says Selig, and now it’s time for action.
“When it comes to the integrity of this game, baseball must confront its problems head-on,” Selig says solemnly. “An impartial, thorough review is called for.”
And the person best equipped to handle this task is the man sitting to his right, the former federal prosecutor and judge, the man who brokered peace in Northern Ireland. Any perceived conflicts of interest are immaterial where the Senator is concerned, Selig says. “Senator Mitchell’s leadership of this investigation ensures that it will be both thorough and fair,” the Commissioner says. “He’s the best qualified guy.”
Selig says that Carlucci and Jeffrey Collins, another lawyer from baseball’s outside law firm Foley & Lardner, will assist Mitchell. They will focus on the time period after August of 2002, when baseball initiated its first drug testing program. But if the Senator finds reason to expand the investigation, “he has my permission to follow the evidence wherever it may lead,” Selig says, squinting into the TV cameras. “He has my full support.”
Selig says Mitchell has no timetable. Everyone in Major League Baseball will be required to cooperate with the investigation, and he hopes the players will do the right thing and cooperate, too.
And the Commissioner wants to make one more thing clear before they take questions. It concerns the statement they were all handed when they walked in, the one from the Commissioner’s office that says Selig asked the union to put a drug policy in place in 1994 but the union turned him down. “I find the revisionist history that’s gone on in some places to be remarkable,” Selig says.
None of the reporters ask Selig why he’s on record stating he’d never heard of steroids until the Andro story broke in 1998 or why he told Bob Nightengale that he was not aware of any steroid problems when the reporter asked him about PEDs back in 1995. But they do have other questions about the scope of Mitchell’s investigation.
Will everything Mitchell learns be made public?
“That’s the point of the investigation,” Selig says.
Does that include naming players?
“Yes,” he says.
Are there any limits on what Mitchell can do?
“The Commissioner has given me complete and unhindered authority to conduct this investigation in any way possible,” says Mitchell.
Will the Commissioner discipline any players who Mitchell finds guilty?
“I want to see what he finds,” answers Selig, saying he wants to keep his options open. “That will be the time to make those kinds of judgments.”
Despite a string of appearances during spring training that hinted at a renewed vitality, George Steinbrenner is noticeably silent as baseball’s highest-paid team—New York’s payroll is $195 million after signing Johnny Damon away from Boston for $52 million over four years—gets off to a sluggish start. The Yankees lose 10 of their first 22 games, though it’s clear Brian Cashman’s put together a fearsome lineup. Damon and Jeter are perfect set-up men for 37-year-old Gary Sheffield and 35-year-old Jason Giambi, who have both shrugged off concerns about age and steroids use. And the Yankees have uncovered another gem in second-year infielder Robinson Cano, who’s batting ninth and hitting .316.
The team clicks when Alex Rodriguez finally starts hitting. The Yankees third baseman sparkles in May, lifting the team to a first-place tie with Boston at 31–20. It’s a good spring across town, too, as second-year manager Willie Randolph has his Mets in first place in the NL East behind young stars Jose Reyes and David Wright, the power hitting of Carlos Beltran, and veteran Tom Glavine anchoring the pitching staff. But no one can match Albert Pujols, who enters June with 25 home runs in 51 games, leading the Cardinals to an NL-best 34–19 record.
Selig is also having a good spring. On May 3, the Commissioner announces the sale of the Nationals to 80-year-old real estate developer Ted Lerner. The purchase price: $450 million, vindicating Selig’s much-ridiculed decision to buy the Expos for $120 million four years earlier. “This has been a long journey,” Selig says, “but I think history will prove it maybe was time well spent.”
Indeed, the sale price is so good that Selig convinces the owners to take the balance of baseball’s haul—more than $200 million after each team gets back its original investment and expenses—and put it in an investment fund. “The owners will only spend it on players,” Selig tells Bob DuPuy. A major reason Lerner went so high for the perennial loser: baseball pushed the cash-strapped D.C. government to ante up $610 million for a new stadium, which will open in 2008.
“There’s no question that the Nationals will spend the money to be competitive,” Selig says.
Selig is also pleased that close friend Carl Pohlad’s 11-year wait for a new stadium is finally over. On May 26, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signs a bill to build a new 39,504-seat open-air stadium for the Twins. Lawmakers insist on one provision: the Twins cannot move or be contracted in the next 30 years. But there’s one provision they can and will ignore: a requirement to hold a referendum on any new sales tax. The result: Minnesota taxpayers are on the hook for $392 million to provide a new home for the billionaire’s team.
But despite the steady flow of good news, the Barry Bonds problem continues to gnaw at Selig. The union has quietly made it clear that it will contest any attempt to suspend Bonds should the government indict him on any or all of the charges—perjury, obstruction, tax evasion—they’re rumored to be pursuing. Selig makes headlines in late April when he announces that baseball has no plans to commemorate Bonds when he hits home run No. 715 to pass the Babe.
“Don’t read anything into it,” Selig says. “Now, should Barry break Hank Aaron’s record, that’s a different story.”
For once, the Commissioner has public opinion behind him: in a recent Associated Press poll, 65 percent of those surveyed judge baseball’s treatment of Bonds to be fair. Even the Babe’s 88-year-old adopted daughter Julia Ruth Stevens agrees. When contacted by the Milwaukee media, Stevens says she thinks Bonds’ pursuit of Ruth is tainted, though she did admit to having a soft spot for the star-crossed slugger after watching a recent episode of his ESPN reality show.
“Honestly, I had nothing but sympathy for the guy,” Stevens says. “He’s got so much on his plate right now. Largely, it’s of his own doing. But when he tears up and everything, you can’t help but feel badly for him.”
Others are not as kind. Bonds is booed unmercifully everywhere the Giants play. In San Diego, one fan throws an oversized plastic needle onto the field. An Astros fan arrives dressed as a syringe. Houston pitcher Russ Springer throws at Bonds several times and is cheered when he’s ejected after finally hitting Barry with a pitch. Websites pop up across the country, imploring teams to walk Bonds to stop him from passing Ruth.
A large contingent of national writers are following Bonds when he arrives in Milwaukee for a two-game series on May 3, one day after hitting No. 712. Selig, whose office is 3.2 miles from Miller Park, declines to attend either game.
It’s another two weeks before Bonds finally passes Ruth. It’s the 4th inning of a sun-splashed afternoon game at San Francisco’s AT&T Park when Bonds steps in against Colorado’s Byung-Hyun Kim with a runner on first and no outs. He runs the count full, then unloads on a 90 mph fastball, sending it sailing halfway up the center-field bleachers, 445 feet away.
The sellout crowd of 42,935 stands and cheers as Bonds circles the bases. Selig made no plans to celebrate Barry, but the Giants did. Banners unfurl from the light towers on either side of the scoreboard in center field, one showing Bonds swinging a bat, the other depicting Aaron swinging above the No. 755. Bonds takes two curtain calls, and when he jogs out to left field for the next inning, another banner unfurls, this one picturing Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays along with the No. 715.
Champagne toasts flow in the postgame locker room despite the 6–3 Giants loss. “This is the best group of guys I’ve ever played with in my entire life,” says Bonds, who is in the last year of his contract.
But how much longer he’ll remain in a Giants uniform is as uncertain as the outcome of the grand jury’s deliberations. Most legal experts predict Bonds will be indicted before the current grand jury term ends in July. Will Selig decide to suspend him and dare the union to lodge an unpopular protest? Will the Giants, who have been supportive throughout their star’s problems, want to endure another trying season—even if the home run record is within Barry’s grasp?
Or will Bonds simply decide he’s had enough, no matter how this season ends? That’s one question, Bonds tells reporters, he’s leaving for another day. He’s averaged 45 home runs each season from 2002 to 2004 before missing all but 14 games in 2005 with three knee surgeries, and he’s now 41 home runs from passing Aaron. At his current pace, Barry will end this season with 23 home runs, a mere 18 from holding the most cherished record in all of sports.
“If you play long enough,” Bonds says, “anything can happen.”
That’s exactly what Bud Selig is afraid of.
“Be my eyes and ears.”
That’s what Selig told Tom Carlucci soon after George Mitchell told the veteran lawyer he was no longer part of his team. The dismissal stung, though Carlucci had to concede Mitchell made the right call. How could Selig call this an independent investigation if he used lawyers from Foley & Lardner, baseball’s longtime outside counsel—and Selig’s personal law firm?
That was months ago. He quickly accepted Selig’s offer to be MLB’s liaison to the Senator’s investigation, and now he’s the man in the middle, explaining to each of baseball’s 30 teams what Mitchell and his lawyers are doing, what Mitchell needs, and why he needs it.
And he’s also the one telling Mitchell that all baseball teams are not created equal, that small market teams don’t always have the staff and expertise to promptly hand over the blizzard of documents and emails Mitchell is demanding. And it’s Carlucci who has the unenviable task of making sure that the man who brought peace to Northern Ireland doesn’t overstep his bounds.
The problems start almost immediately. In April, Mitchell bypasses the union and sends letters directly to a handful of players, requesting their medical records, drug test results, and contact information. It’s a clear violation of baseball’s collective bargaining agreement just as baseball management is opening negotiations on a new labor deal with the players. Carlucci tactfully reminds the Senator that he and his team—his lawyers actually do most of the interviews—have to follow all the game’s rules.
The union is less tactful. On May 5, union general counsel Michael Weiner sends out an email to all players and their agents. Weiner writes that Mitchell has already ignored the players’ statutory rights, and the union’s top lawyer strongly urges them to reach out to the union if they are contacted by the Senator or his staff. “The scope of the investigation to date is plainly inconsistent with the provisions of the Basic Agreement,” Weiner tells them.
There’s also an early dustup about legal representation. Mitchell is adamant that MLB employees—everyone from team presidents to clubhouse attendants—sit for interviews without a lawyer, a demand that prompts howls of protest. Carlucci brokers a compromise: teams can provide in-house counsel or hire an outside lawyer to represent their employees. Still, Mitchell issues a warning: anyone showing up with a personal lawyer will be referred to Selig for discipline.
Then there’s what many are quietly calling Mitchell’s “eye test.” When you’re sitting in the dugout and watching batting practice, Mitchell and his team ask managers and coaches, who do you suspect of using steroids? The same question is put to general managers, trainers, scouts—anyone who comes into regular contact with players. The tactic stuns team lawyers, who complain bitterly about this line of questioning on the weekly conference call Carlucci sets up as a clearinghouse for complaints.
Carlucci is surprised as well. It’s his job to sit in on these interviews, making sure MLB employees understand they are obligated to answer questions posed by Mitchell and his lawyers. But how can he tell baseball people to speculate on what players are doing if they don’t have the facts to back it up? “Did I see players get bigger and stronger?” a coach would say. “Yes. But I’m not going to speculate on why when I never saw or heard anything.”
But Mitchell refuses to back down. The Commissioner gave him carte blanche, the Senator reminds his critics. And if Selig has any objections, he isn’t making them known.
Mitchell’s also surprised when he discovers that a number of teams are opposed to his investigation—strongly opposed. That can only mean one thing: Selig never shared with Mitchell what he’d heard on the conference call with ownership soon after he decided to conduct this investigation.
“What’s the point?” Selig was asked repeatedly. “Why are we killing our own product?” Let Congress investigate, owners and team executives told him as they rattled off one objection after the next. We’re going to shell out millions of dollars. We’re turning our managers and coaches into snitches. We’re poisoning the well with the union.
Nonsense, Selig told them. “This has to be done,” he replied. “It will bring us closure.”
Few were buying Selig’s explanation. Fewer were happy about his decision. But no one’s willing to say out loud what some think Mitchell’s investigation is really about: cleaning up Bud Selig’s legacy.
Which is about the best thing the union will call it. Almost every union official sees Mitchell’s investigation as nothing short of an act of betrayal by the Commissioner. The 2003 survey testing already revealed that the game had a drug habit. Enough stars were already identified as users—Giambi, Palmeiro, Canseco, Caminiti, and more—to prove that the problem wasn’t confined to a few isolated cases. And the union already opened the collective bargaining agreement twice to upgrade the game’s drug testing program, now the most stringent in all of sports.
The union wonders what adding a few more names to the list of users could possibly accomplish. You can be against steroids but in favor of fairness, union officials tell reporters. And what is fair about relitigating the past when both sides have already admitted they made mistakes and have taken big steps to correct them?
No one knows what the government plans to do with the 2003 tests they refuse to relinquish. And no one knows what will happen to any information a player hands over to Mitchell. The Senator is promising to keep everything confidential, but both Selig and Mitchell have said the public will be told everything Mitchell uncovers. That doesn’t square up. And the union knows there’s nothing Mitchell can do to prevent government prosecutors from seizing anything he learns. Maybe Mitchell will play fair, but the government’s already proven it will break the rules if and when it sees fit. Even a first-year law student knows the union would fail to perform its basic fiduciary responsibility unless it advised players to seek counsel before deciding to meet with Mitchell.
Trouble with the players was expected. But Mitchell is not getting anywhere interviewing club employees, and he tells Selig that much of what he and his three lawyers doing most of the fieldwork are hearing is “transparently false.” Frustrated, he asks the Commissioner to discipline anyone failing to cooperate with stiff fines and, in the worst cases, the loss of their jobs.
Mitchell’s ire grows on June 6, when the Arizona Republic uncovers an affidavit for a search warrant for the home of veteran Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley. Filed by Balco investigator Jeff Novitzky, the affidavit is a stunner: Grimsley admits using steroids to help him recover from an injury while with the Yankees. He says he switched to using growth hormone once drug testing started, and has popped amphetamines most of his career.
“Everybody had greenies,” Grimsley told investigators. “That’s like aspirin.”
Grimsley identified a handful of players taking steroids and the trainers who were their suppliers, though all names were redacted. Referred to but not named is Kirk Radomski, Grimsley’s supplier and the man who turned the pitcher over to Novitzky.
Since the raid on his house in December, Radomski has recorded dozens of conversations with his clients for the feds. He’s mailed out packages and handed over the FedEx receipts with return addresses, along with the checks the athletes used to pay for the steroids and human growth hormone. His last call was to Grimsley. Once news got out that the pitcher was busted, all Radomski’s clients understood that his operation had been busted, too.
The 15-year veteran said amphetamine use was so rampant before being included in testing this season that there were two pots of coffee in clubhouses throughout baseball, one marked “unleaded,” the other “leaded” to indicate it was laced with amphetamines. Latin American players, Grimsley said, were the major source of that drug.
Mitchell is left wondering how those he and his lawyers have interviewed could know nothing about any of this when Grimsley’s affidavit, now all over the Internet, described a sport still rife with drug users.
After three months, Carlucci worries that Mitchell is growing tired of finding nothing but closed doors. The Senator’s overtures to Fehr have been unsuccessful, and no players have come forward. Mitchell approached Kimberly Bell, but the government told him all witnesses in the Bonds case are off-limits until further notice. And even if Bonds is indicted, it will be months—maybe a year—until the trial is over and the witnesses are free to talk.
Mitchell’s best hope might be a long shot: a study of blood tests from players’ spring training physicals that, in the hands of the right person, could be used to identify trends in things like cholesterol levels that would indicate the presence of anabolic steroids. The right person would be Dr. James J. Heckman, an economist and Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, known for his work on “latent variable analysis,” the process he would use to determine the level of steroid use in baseball over the last several years.
The study would have to be “deidentified”—stripped of all information that would identify any players. Mitchell has asked Carlucci to shepherd this one through, and the lawyer knows it won’t be easy. There are HIPAA laws to navigate and different medical privacy laws in just about every state. A meeting has been set for late July to discuss the idea with the union, which has already raised objections. Several team lawyers have objections, too.
Carlucci thinks back to the initial meeting with Mitchell. They all knew this investigation wasn’t going to be easy—that Mitchell would have to rely on his powers of persuasion. And yes, the Senator is being paid handsomely for his efforts. But right now, it’s hard to see how Mitchell will turn his investigation into a success.