Last November, Alex Rodriguez, in a bitter dispute with Major League Baseball, took to the radio to dispute allegations that he had used performance-enhancing drugs supplied by a South Florida clinic.
Asked, “Did you do any P.E.D.s?” Rodriguez responded, “No.”
But early this year, when Rodriguez sat down with federal agents, he offered a different answer, admitting that he had used banned substances provided by Anthony Bosch from late 2010 to October 2012, according to a report Wednesday by The Miami Herald.
Rodriguez, the Yankees third baseman who was recently reinstated after serving a season-long doping suspension, offered his admission after federal prosecutors granted him immunity in a wide-ranging investigation of Bosch and his clinic, Biogenesis of America, The Herald said. The Herald’s report was based on a 15-page synopsis of the meeting between Rodriguez and federal agents last Jan. 29.
Rodriguez told investigators that he paid Bosch about $12,000 a month for his services and substances, including prefilled syringes for hormone injections into his stomach, The Herald said. Bosch also gave Rodriguez “tips on how to beat M.L.B.’s drug testing,” the report said.
Timeline
Rodriguez: A Continual Stir
Since Alex Rodriguez broke into the majors in 1996, he has been unable to escape the bizarre and controversial stories that seem to follow him on and off the field, the latest involving performance-enhancing drugs.
A person with knowledge of Rodriguez’s situation confirmed on Wednesday that the player had met with federal investigators in January in connection with the Biogenesis case.
The details of Rodriguez’s admissions come as he is emerging from the longest suspension Major League Baseball has levied for doping violations. At age 39, he is scheduled to return to the Yankees next season, with three years and more than $60 million remaining on his contract, and much uncertainty about whether he can still play baseball at a productive level.
Rodriguez has stayed out of the spotlight for much of this year, watching from a distance as the Yankees again failed to make the postseason.
He had quickly retreated from his fight with Major League Baseball after an arbitrator upheld most of his suspension in early January. But more than a month before that, Rodriguez, who was being advised by a team of lawyers, stormed out of the appeal hearing at baseball’s headquarters in New York and went on the sports radio station WFAN. There, he gave his most emphatic denial of his use of performance-enhancing drugs in the Biogenesis case — and criticized baseball officials for targeting him.
On Wednesday, one of Rodriguez’s lawyers, Joe Tacopina, declined to comment on The Herald story, saying in an email that he was prevented from speaking on the matter because of “grand jury secrecy laws,” which, he said, appear “to have been violated.”
A spokesman for Major League Baseball also declined to comment, as did the United States attorney’s office in Miami, which prosecuted Bosch and has open cases against others connected to his clinic. Bosch pleaded guilty to distribution charges last month.
In addition to Rodriguez, The Herald reported, prosecutors have granted immunity to eight other current and former professional players connected to Bosch: Ryan Braun, Melky Cabrera, Nelson Cruz, Francisco Cervelli, Yasmani Grandal, Cesar David Puello, Jordany Valdespin and Manny Ramirez.
In the summer of 2013, with the cooperation of Bosch, Major League Baseball suspended Rodriguez and 13 other players, all in the absence of positive drug tests. Rodriguez, who was originally barred for 211 games, appealed his punishment, with he and his lawyers noting that he had not failed a drug test.
When Rodriguez met with federal investigators in January, though, he explained how Bosch had counseled him on beating such tests. “Bosch advised him to only use midstream urine for M.L.B. drug testing. Bosch told Rodriguez not to use the beginning or end of the urine stream,” The Herald reported, citing the Drug Enforcement Administration report.
Don Catlin, the chief science officer for the Banned Substances Control Group, called that approach “nonsense.” “People always have these old wives’ tales of how to beat the test, and that’s one of them,” Catlin said. “I’ve heard it before. If you think about it, the urine is coming from the bladder, which is pretty closely connected, and it implies that certain parts of the urine are different than others — and that’s just not the case.”
Bosch, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” in January, said he tracked Rodriguez’s blood to know how quickly a substance would leave his body; he said doing so would help him assist Rodriguez in fooling baseball’s drug testers. Catlin agreed that that would be a better approach to beating a drug test, although still not foolproof.
The report by The Herald underlined just how fateful a month January turned out to be for Rodriguez. First came the arbitrator’s ruling, then the meeting with investigators, and then, about a week later, a decision by Rodriguez to drop any effort to challenge the arbitrator in the courts.
Although he is viewed as one of the most talented ballplayers of his generation, Rodriguez has had his image battered repeatedly by links to doping. In 2009 he acknowledged that he had used performance-enhancing drugs in the early part of that decade, while he was still playing for the Texas Rangers. In that admission, Rodriguez said it was a cousin, later identified as Yuri Sucart, who had supplied him with banned substances from the Dominican Republic.
According to The Herald, Rodriguez told the federal agents in January that Sucart introduced him to Bosch and that Sucart played the role of middleman until he had a dispute over money with Rodriguez in 2012. Sucart is now facing charges in the Biogenesis case that he conspired to distribute testosterone and human growth hormone.
Court papers unsealed in Sucart’s criminal case show that Rodriguez paid him about $1 million, plus other benefits, as part of a settlement that prevented him from disclosing sensitive information.
Amid the new revelations, Rodriguez is back on the Yankees’ roster, his suspension over. He is still owed an enormous amount of money over the next three seasons, plus potential home run bonuses. For now, there are no indications the Yankees are looking to take action, such as releasing Rodriguez and being accountable for virtually all of the money still owed him.
Rather, they may wait to see whether new developments in the Bigoenesis case could lead baseball to punish Rodriguez again or whether he plays so poorly in spring training that he opts for a disability retirement that would allow the Yankees to get back much of the money they owe him through insurance coverage. A third option would be a contract buyout that would ostensibly allow Rodriguez to play elsewhere.
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a baseball player given immunity by prosecutors, according to The Miami Herald. He is Yasmani Grandal, not Yosmani.