More to say on the SF Chronicle story on the Giambis:
Agent Arn Tellem, who accompanied Giambi and his younger brother, Jeremy, to the grand jury, did not return calls seeking comment. Other efforts to reach the Giambis were unsuccessful.
Arn Tellem: what with the Nomar negotiations and this, having a bad year.
Jeremy Giambi, a former A’s outfielder who spent 2004 with the minor league Las Vegas 51s, also told the BALCO grand jury that he had injected banned drugs received from Anderson, according to a transcript of his testimony.
So, apparently you still need some modicum of skill to succeed. Or you just end up as a bulked-up minor leaguer.
Jason Giambi hit 94 home runs in three seasons with the Yankees. But he played in fewer than half the team’s games this year, reportedly ill with an intestinal parasite and a benign tumor on his pituitary gland. His ties to BALCO fueled speculation that his illness was related to steroid use, but he told reporters in August that there was no connection.
Seriously, I hope that this is a warning to those who might want to dabble in roids. And those 94 homers don’t include the two in Game 7 of 2003. Take them back.
“So, you would put [the testosterone] in your arm?” Nedrow asked.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Giambi said. “You’d put it in your ass.”
I’m just wondering about the mechanics of this. How do you inject your own ass? As I understand it, women who have IVF treatments and need shots in the rear usually get their husbands to help them. Edit: this quote now sounds different in context “I could think about taking them, but I never have. Guys take a lot of pride in what they do, and it’s kind of sickening for them to work their butts off all year around and now it’s: ‘He hits home runs. He’s on steroids.’”
Toward the end of his grand jury testimony, which followed a 2003 season in which he nursed the knee injury and hit just .250, Giambi was asked, “Had this all not become public, would you still be using?”
“I didn’t actually notice a huge difference, to be honest with you,” Giambi answered. “I, of course, got injured this year. So, that’s not a fair assessment, either. Maybe, yes, no, I don’t know.”
To be fair, if the testimony is accurate, Giambi was a good hitter even before 2001, the first stated date of usage. He got a $120 million contract on the strength of that hitting. Now he’s a Mendoza-line (.208) hitter who lost the year to a pituitary gland tumor. Why? (Of course, you could argue that he might have taken steroids even before that…)
Jeremy Giambi’s testimony mirrored his brother’s - right down to Anderson’s notifying him that he had tested positive for the steroid Deca Durabolin. Jeremy Giambi described to the grand jury how he had injected human growth hormone and testosterone he received from the trainer before the start of the 2003 season, when he played for the Boston Red Sox.
Didn’t help him at all, did it? Had a crap 2003. Replaced by Kevin Millar, whose body is hardly a temple. Lesson learnt: KFC, better for you than HGH.
The younger Giambi testified that he knew testosterone was a steroid but that Anderson had described “the clear” and “the cream” only as undetectable “alternatives to steroids.”
“For all I knew, it could have been baby lotion,” Jeremy Giambi told the grand jury.
Well, again, to be fair, there’s all sorts of weird supplements being hawked in workout magazines that claim to help you bulk up and so on. I can’t tell if Jeremy G. is being disingenuous to avoid implicating himself or seriously kind of clueless. Do you spend thousands of dollars on baby lotion? (Spending thousands on dollars to pay someone hot to apply baby lotion on you doesn’t count.) More Giamboid cluelessness:
“I don’t know, I guess - I mean, you’re right,” Jeremy Giambi testified. “I probably shouldn’t have trusted the guy. But I just felt like, you know, what he had done for Barry and, you know, I didn’t think the guy would send me something that was, you know, Drano or something, you know, I mean, I hope he wouldn’t.”
Nedrow suggested Jeremy Giambi probably also trusted Anderson’s drugs because his brother had taken them, too.
Said Jeremy: “Yeah, and Jason didn’t die.”
Not dying is a good enough reason to take a mysterious pill? Oy.