by Tim Elfrink
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2014 by Tim Elfrink and Gus Garcia-Roberts
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Version_1
To Adele and Jenny
CONTENTS
* * *
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Cast of Characters
PROLOGUE “Collateral Damage”
CHAPTER ONE A Cousin with a Rocket Launcher
CHAPTER TWO Mystery Elixirs, Speed, and Steroids
CHAPTER THREE License to Dope
CHAPTER FOUR Gurus of Growth Hormone
CHAPTER FIVE Steroid Spring Cleaning
CHAPTER SIX “Dr. G, You Are the Best!”
CHAPTER SEVEN Inside the Notebooks
CHAPTER EIGHT Bosch’s Shadow Empire
CHAPTER NINE “HS”
CHAPTER TEN Infiltrating “The U”
CHAPTER ELEVEN MLB’s CIA: Enter the Spies
CHAPTER TWELVE The Beginning of the End
CHAPTER THIRTEEN A New Steroid Era Exposed
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Bad Cops
CHAPTER FIFTEEN A Snitch Is Born
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Singled Out
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The “Farce”
EPILOGUE The Cost of War
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
PHOTOGRAPHS
CAST OF CHARACTERS
* * *
BASEBALL PLAYERS
Suspended as a result of MLB’s Biogenesis investigation
Alex Rodriguez
Shortstop for the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers, and third baseman for the New York Yankees. One of the greatest hitters of all time and the highest-grossing player in history.
Ryan Braun
Milwaukee Brewers outfielder and former University of Miami (UM) star
Nelson Cruz
Outfielder for the Texas Rangers through 2013
Jhonny Peralta
Shortstop for the Detroit Tigers through 2013
Everth Cabrera
San Diego Padres shortstop
Francisco Cervelli
New York Yankees catcher
Antonio Bastardo
Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher
Jordany Valdespin
New York Mets second baseman
Jesus Montero
Seattle Mariners catcher and designated hitter
Fautino de los Santos
Relief pitcher who last played for the Oakland A’s in 2012
Jordan Norberto
Minor league relief pitcher, most recently in the Oakland A’s system
Cesar Carrillo
Former UM star and minor league pitcher in the Detroit Tigers system
Cesar Puello
Minor league outfielder in the New York Mets system
Sergio Escalona
Minor league pitcher in the Houston Astros system
Fernando Martinez
Minor league outfielder in the New York Yankees system
Suspended earlier for failing drug tests while on the Biogenesis regimen
Melky Cabrera
Outfielder for the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants, and Toronto Blue Jays
Bartolo Colon
Veteran pitcher for eight teams including the New York Yankees and Oakland A’s
Yasmani Grandal
San Diego Padres catcher, former UM star
Manny Ramirez
Outfielder for the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers
Ronny Paulino
Journeyman catcher who last played in MLB for the Baltimore Orioles in 2012
MEDICINE MEN
Tony Bosch
The unlicensed proprietor of Biogenesis, a Coral Gables anti-aging clinic
Dr. Pedro Bosch
Tony’s father, a licensed doctor in Florida
Dr. Anthony Galea
A Toronto-based expert in sports medicine
THE BIOGENESIS CREW
Porter Fischer
Former marketing manager for Biogenesis
Yuri Sucart
Alex Rodriguez’s cousin
Jorge “Oggi” Velazquez
Tony Bosch’s former business partner in another anti-aging clinic
Anthony and Pete Carbone
Owners of several tanning salons in South Florida, including a South Miami location where Bosch and Velazquez had a clinic
Gary L. Jones
An ex-con tanning bed repairman
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Lazaro “Lazer” Collazo
UM’s pitching coach until 2003
Jimmy Goins
Strength and conditioning trainer for the baseball and track and field teams
Marcelo Albir
Former pitcher
Gaby Sanchez
Former UM slugger–turned–first baseman for the Miami Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates
MLB EXECUTIVES
Allan “Bud” H. Selig
Commissioner since 1992, former Milwaukee Brewers owner
Robert D. Manfred Jr.
Chief operating officer and Selig’s right-hand man
Daniel R. Halem
Executive vice president for labor relations
Daniel T. Mullin
Senior vice president of investigations
OTHER KEY FIGURES
Sam and Seth Levinson
Owners of ACES Inc., a Brooklyn-based sports agency
Jerome Hill
Florida Department of Health investigator
Jose “Pepe” Gomez
Rodriguez’s longtime friend, “business agent,” and right-hand man
STEROID ERA FIGURES
Jose Canseco
Former outfielder who published a memoir in 2005 admitting he’d used steroids throughout his career and naming multiple teammates as steroid users
George Mitchell
Senator who led an inquiry into baseball’s steroid problems that resulted in the 2007 Mitchell Report, which named eighty-nine players tied to steroids and recommended mass reforms
Kirk Radomski
Former New York Mets clubhouse manager and steroid dealer who was a key source for the Mitchell Report
&
nbsp; Greg Stejskal
Former FBI agent who led a landmark early steroid case
PROLOGUE
* * *
“Collateral Damage”
Porter Fischer wanted his money back. All $4,000 of it. He felt his volcanic temper bubbling, the hot rage raising the tendons in his muscle-rippled neck, but he steeled himself not to give in. After all, he wasn’t being unreasonable.
Tony Bosch had promised, hadn’t he? He’d said he’d pay Fischer back in $1,200 increments, returning all of Fischer’s money plus a tidy profit. After weeks of absurd excuses and evasions, though, he’d seen only a fraction of it. As he barged into Bosch’s cluttered back office inside Biogenesis, his anti-aging clinic on US 1, just a deep fly ball from the University of Miami’s Alex Rodriguez Park, Fischer swallowed his fury.
Surely, they could talk like adults.
But as Fischer stared at Bosch’s perfectly tanned face, he saw only mockery looking back. Tiny wrinkles bloomed around Bosch’s lively brown eyes as the hint of a smile played at his mouth. He wouldn’t be getting his money back this week, Bosch told Fischer.
“What are you going to do about it?” Bosch asked in a gravelly tone.
Fischer felt his heart jackhammering, and he knew he wouldn’t fight the anger anymore. He could beat the hell out of the doctor right there, no question. Thanks to the two years of anabolic steroids and testosterone that Bosch had sold him, the middle-aged marketing specialist was ripped.
That’s exactly why he’d invested in Biogenesis in the first place. If Bosch could turn a tubby fortysomething like Fischer into a Stallone stunt double, just think of the profits waiting to be made. Of course, that was before Fischer knew the details of the doctor’s mysterious cash flow problem, his habit of leaving business partners in the lurch, or the cadre of high-profile clients who paid for Bosch’s lothario lifestyle but ultimately led to the clinic’s demise.
Fischer realized he’d probably head to jail if he kicked in Bosch’s face. His mind raced. Suddenly, he remembered a meeting a few weeks back. Bosch had been railing against his staff for not bringing in enough new patients. What was it he’d said? “I don’t need any of you guys. I can do all of this from the trunk of my car. All I need is these patient files,” Fischer remembered him yelling, pointing to the boxes of records in his office.
Fischer knew exactly what to do.
“I’m leaving, but I’m telling you this right now,” he growled, his white knuckles closed tight around Bosch’s office door, “if I don’t see my money soon, there’s going to be collateral damage.”
• • •
Eleven months later, in late September 2013, a strange crowd encamped like gypsies on one of midtown Manhattan’s most moneyed blocks.
First came the notebook-clutching reporters, the camera crews, and ambush photographers. They were all assigned a perp walk—yell questions and snap photos as a person is led in and out of a building at his lowest moment—but instead of a courthouse, they were posted outside 245 Park Avenue.
It’s a cold and innocuous building, with no signage betraying that Major League Baseball occupies multiple floors of the modernist skyscraper. On this day, unsmiling bruisers in dark suits guarded the glass-and-blond-wood foyer.
Then came the “protesters.” They were twelve people—mostly men, all claiming to be from the north Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights—quietly holding miniature Dominican flags and signs decorated with the same neat handwriting.
BUD RESIGN, read one, a reference to MLB Commissioner Bud H. Selig, who had already announced his resignation effective at the end of the 2014 season. FAKE JUSTICE, read another.
Many bore the same message: BOSCH LIAR!
At the time, the US government was shut down from political in-fighting in Washington, slicing services to the bare bones and costing federal workers their paychecks. Yet these protesters were here to agitate for an athlete with a net worth of a quarter-billion dollars in a dispute with his employer. The rabble’s ranks swelled into the hundreds. If you guessed that money was exchanged for their support, you were right.
A few New Yorkers stopped on their morning commutes to inquire about the growing commotion. The reporters were soon sick of fielding the question.
“A-Rod,” they replied with exasperation.
“Oh,” came the stock reply from the pedestrians before resuming their hustle to the Grand Central train station. “A-Rod.”
To the tabloid-fed denizens of that city, in the previous ten months “A-Rod” came to signify more than the nickname of Alex Rodriguez, the third baseman for the New York Yankees and the highest-paid player in the game.
“A-Rod” meant the winding scandal swallowing Rodriguez’s career whole, the million-dollar legal entourages and strategic media leaks, the secret grand jury proceedings in Florida involving a fake doctor, the bags of cash offered by MLB investigators in the back of darkened sport utility vehicles, and the documents stolen and resold after broad-daylight break-ins.
It meant Biogenesis.
Outside of MLB’s Park Avenue headquarters, a jumbo black Escalade pulled up to the sidewalk, sending photographers and cameramen sprinting toward it.
Rodriguez stepped out, dressed like a Brooks Brothers model in a trim blue suit, dark hair closely cropped over a heavy-browed face tweezed and smoothed of the slightest wrinkles. He was flanked by four members of his powerhouse legal team, a well-dressed crew of criminal defenders and high-powered corporate litigators seasoned at fighting MLB over doping accusations. An attorney who once was a hockey enforcer used his beefy arms to cut through the crush of reporters.
Rodriguez made a beeline for the corralled protesters. He clutched their hands like a politician, thanking them in Spanish.
As he pivoted, strode the steps, and disappeared into the building, they broke into a chant. “A-Rod!” they yelled. “A-Rod! A-Rod! A-Rod!”
It was the warm Monday morning of September 30, 2013. The Yankees’ lackluster season had ended the day earlier with a fourth-place finish, twelve games behind the hated Red Sox. It had been a paranoid and lonesome summer for their star slugger, who had waged public, private, and legal wars with the commissioner’s office, the Yankees, and his own players union. He had been limited to forty-four games due to injury, told to “shut the fuck up” by his own general manager, and drilled with a fastball by a sanctimonious pitcher in Fenway Park. Through it all, he faced expulsion from the sport in which he had built his fortune.
For Rodriguez, the games now truly began.
• • •
Anthony Bosch used a side-street door to enter the MLB headquarters building, skirting the protestors waving posters with his name scrawled next to LIAR.
What had started as an argument over a few thousand dollars between this self-proclaimed doctor and an investor in Florida had boiled over into a cheating scandal of a magnitude not weathered by baseball since Chicago gangsters teamed up with White Sox players to fix the World Series nearly a century earlier.
The 1919 Black Sox conspiracy had resulted in lifetime bans for eight players and signaled, emphatically, that baseball would no longer tolerate dalliances with gamblers.
The Biogenesis scandal, as the fallout from Tony Bosch’s clinic has been dubbed, has in many ways had equal import. A commissioner notorious for accommodating baseball’s Steroid Era pivoted 180 degrees, doling out fifteen lengthy suspensions in the biggest mass discipline over performance-enhancing drugs in the history of American sports. At least a decade late, Selig was attempting to get his Kenesaw Mountain Landis on, eradicating performance-enhancing substances from a game overrun by them, in the same fashion that the legendary commissioner had exiled wise guys.
Standing in his way, though, was Alex Rodriguez, once corporate baseball’s Miami-bred Latino savior. A-Rod’s tabloid-dominating claims that Selig was unfairly targeting him forced baseball fans into opposing camps, either believing that a group of players tried to scam the game or that the most powe
rful men in MLB orchestrated a conspiracy to take down the era’s most famous player.
The full, untold story behind Biogenesis—as reported through Bosch’s notebooks, which started it all, arbitration hearing testimony obtained by these authors, unreported state investigative records, thousands of pages of court records, and dozens of interviews with key players from superstar entourages to MLB offices—is far more complicated, more bitter, more troubling, and more downright bizarre than either of those narratives.
It’s a story in which tanning salon operators and a convicted counterfeiter team up to outsmart Ivy League–educated attorneys and a self-proclaimed biochemist loses a vial of his superstar client’s blood on the dance floor of a nightclub. A steroid dealer named Oggi is said to be threatening murder. Private eyes lead high-speed pursuits down Miami’s busiest thoroughfare, baseball detectives sleep with a potential witness and possibly interfere with a law-enforcement investigation, thousands of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills are handed off in between tuna melts at seedy diners, and the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball agrees to put in a good word to prosecutors for a steroid dealer potentially facing charges for dealing to kids.
A multibillion-dollar gray market for human growth hormone thrives thanks to a governor whose company once perpetuated the nation’s biggest Medicare fraud. Teenagers, including a fifteen-year-old Dominican phenom, are pushed by parents, agents, and well-respected youth coaches into juicing in order to make it in baseball. Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, and other wealthy stars buy drugs from the same storefront as a Spanish gangster and a Grammy-winning crooner. And one of the top university baseball programs in the nation ignores a glaring steroid problem.
