Before the first Yankees spring training game last March, I waited in front of Jason Giambi's locker. Tales of the Incredible Shrinking Giambi were the buzz of the Grapefruit League. So, I expected to see a former steroids user who had dropped many pounds over the winter after being scared straight by being ensnared in the BALCO investigation.
Even so, I wasn't prepared for what walked through the door. The sight of Giambi, in a cut-off muscle shirt, made me burst out laughing. I had to cover my mouth. Where was the other half of him?
Giambi looked like he'd lifted weights all winter. But he was a shadow of his previous enormous tattooed self. Getting off the juice had shrunk him from an incredible hulk to just another iron-pounding gym rat you'd overlook on a beach.
"I've only lost four pounds, to be honest with you," Giambi said with a straight face but a sheepish look.
What, four pounds in each biceps, calf, quadriceps and deltoid muscle? It adds up, doesn't it, Jason?
For me, the sight of the honest version of Jason Giambi brought home again, in graphic terms, just how enormous an advantage steroid cheaters have in sports. It's not a few pounds. In many cases, it's a whole new body. To Giambi, steroids meant a fake physique that brought him a $120 million contract.
Throughout this season, the sight of Giambi has helped erase the last shreds of sympathy I felt toward baseball's gifted players who aren't satisfied with honest success and wealth, but want to break the rules so they can get more, more, more. My sympathy is now reserved for all those players at the fringes of the big leagues who see the greedy stars and think, "He's better than I am to start with. Now, he's breaking the rules, too. I have no chance unless I endanger my health and do what he does."
As for the Giambis, it's fine by me when they finally have their day of reckoning -- after they've banked their millions and enjoyed their glory days. Still, it's always a shock when the final veil falls. Pete Rose lied for years about his gambling on baseball. Yet his confession still saddened something in us that wants to think the best -- or, at least, not the worst -- of others. Now, apparently, Giambi will be added to the list of baseball's serial deniers.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Giambi admitted last December during testimony before a federal grand jury that he'd used illegal steroids he obtained from Barry Bonds's personal trainer. The Chronicle said it reviewed a transcript of proceedings in which Giambi described how he'd injected steroids, swallowed steroids and rubbed steroids on his skin. Before that, in '01, Giambi reportedly acknowledged using human growth hormones, too. That would exhaust the cheating playbook.
Giambi's grand jury account of "how the first conversation started" between him and Bonds trainer Greg Anderson will fascinate many inquiring fans. "So I started to ask [Anderson], 'Hey, what are the things you're doing with Barry? He's an incredible player,' " Giambi said, according to the Chronicle.
"You know, I assumed because he's Barry's trainer -- you know, Barry -- but he never said one time, 'This is what Barry's taking, this is what Barry's doing,' " said Giambi. "He never gave up another name."
Never "gave up" a name? What is this, bad Sopranos dialogue? Granted, the presumption of Bonds's innocence now hangs by a thread. But Bonds is such an odd, extreme, gifted and alienated character that he might do almost anything. Or not do anything. Just out of perversity.
Yet one night this past season at Shea Stadium, Bonds seemed to come perilously close to giving himself up. Asked about the Justice Department investigation, Bonds said, "What do I care what they do? What do I care what you think? I don't have to prove to you or anyone else in the world. . . . When you come up with the truth, then write your [expletive]. Until then, shut up."
For Giambi, this has been a bad week in an ugly saga. But for baseball, it's actually a great break.
Steroid use is the biggest blight on the game. And the guiltiest party in the charade is the players' union. In March, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called union president Don Fehr before his Commerce Committee and staged a 2 1/2-hour public flogging. Expert witnesses and leaders from other sports were called to expose the union's sophistic arguments in blocking the kind of thorough drug-testing that most other major sports already have.
Fehr went away properly chastened on the one area in which his union has disgraced itself. "I understand your words," Fehr said to McCain, "and I understand the mood of the rest of this hearing."
Still, in the face of powerful agents and star players who want to keep their fake muscles at all costs, even the best intentioned people need fresh ammunition to keep up the fight against steroids. Now, everybody has a belt full of fresh bullets.
"I've been saying for many months that I instituted a very tough program in the minor leagues on steroids in 2001. We need that program at the major league level," Commissioner Bud Selig yesterday said after speaking in Washington about the return of baseball to the nation's capital. "This is just another manifestation of why we need that right away. My only reaction is we're going to leave no stone unturned until we have that policy in place by spring training 2005."
There is no need to turn over stones. This issue is obvious. Every player, agent and union executive should realize it. Baseball is in the midst of a glorious renaissance on the field. But if this popularity is bought at the price of the honor of the sport and the health of its players, then it is not worth a fraction of the grim price that is being paid.
Jason Giambi has sacrificed his reputation, his place in sports history and perhaps even the $80 million that remains on his contract if the Yankees can find a way to void it. At least his humiliation can come in a good cause if his physical deterioration and endangered career become a rallying point for the radically improved drug program that baseball desperately needs.