by Tim Elfrink
Bosch also testified that he provided a unique service for Rodriguez during some infusions, by attaching an oxygen mask to Rodriguez’s face. His theory was that the pure oxygen could help increase the superstar’s production of stem cells, which can aid recovery from injuries. Bosch would have preferred a hyperbaric chamber but figured the mask would do the trick.
Bosch mostly administered these infusions himself to Rodriguez, though he said that at one point Sucart borrowed the IV pole and oxygen mask to meet his cousin in Tampa. Bosch also used an IV to draw blood from Rodriguez, which he tended to do before or during spring training to check his hormone levels.
But sometimes Bosch and Rodriguez weren’t exactly clinical. Bosch had previously visited Rodriguez at his home on Star Island, a picturesque plot of mansions of the rich and famous off of South Beach. According to Bosch’s later testimony, he had infused Rodriguez with peptides and HGH in a media room in Rodriguez’s mansion. But on one instance in 2011, Bosch later said, he had been unable to meet Rodriguez at his home. Needing to draw his blood to determine the dosages he was going to give him, they arranged a backup plan. Bosch would meet Rodriguez at LIV, a nightclub at Miami Beach’s famous Fontainebleau Hotel, and draw his blood there.
The syringe procedure went down in a bathroom stall, according to Bosch’s later testimony. Sucart stood guard. Because the proper blood-packing paraphernalia would have been conspicuous, Bosch said he just put the vial of Rodriguez’s blood in his pocket.
Then, instead of going home or to his office, Bosch headed back inside LIV and spent some time dancing. In an almost unbelievable bit of tomfoolery that has not been reported until now, Bosch then realized he had lost the vial. After some frantic searching amid the thumping techno and milling crowds, he found it lying on the nightclub floor. Bosch told this story during his arbitration testimony, according to a source. When an attorney for Rodriguez pointedly asked whether he had used cocaine that night, Bosch denied it.
Rodriguez was on a monthly protocol, according to Bosch, and besides infusions and blood drawings, they used trusted couriers Sucart and Velazquez to exchange drugs and cash. Bosch gave substances—such as the troches Rodriguez was supposed to use right before games or working out, creams, peptides, and HGH—to Sucart, who then relayed them to his younger cousin. It was Sucart who spoke on the phone and texted with Bosch hundreds of times. The cash traveled a chain, with the wad shrinking with every middleman taking a cut: Rodriguez gave Sucart money, who passed it on to Velazquez, who gave it to Bosch, who usually pocketed a grand or so and then provided the remainder to Biogenesis’s chief financial officer, Ricardo Martinez. Bosch’s total charges to Rodriguez varied, but they usually maxed out at $12,000 per month. You could say Bosch was a fan of the steady pay: He said in one note that he had a four-year “contract” with Rodriguez, coinciding with the superstar’s agreement with the Yankees.
But after Sucart started attracting too much attention and then the sycophantic relationship between “Cacique” and his cousin finally fell apart, Rodriguez decided to go without a middleman separating him from Bosch.
The beginning of the end came when Sucart, in a Yankees hoodie, was spotted casually walking around the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, where the team was staying during a series against the Oakland Athletics in late May 2011.
The MLB ban on Sucart didn’t apply to public areas, of course, and Rodriguez had been paying for his cousin gofer to accompany him on road trips. But now MLB executive Rob Manfred said of Sucart’s continuing association with Rodriguez: “We’re looking into it.” In arbitration testimony, Manfred was more forthcoming. “I spoke to Yankee officials about who had been around and whether the ban had been violated in any way, and, you know, received assurances that the ban was being properly enforced.”
The New York Daily News ran a poll asking fans whether they were “concerned” that Sucart was traveling on road trips. Fifty-seven percent chose this option: “Yes. This indicates A-Rod’s steroid scandal may not be completely behind him.”
This is not the sort of spotlight you want on the courier regularly bringing you illicit drugs. And the timing wasn’t good for human Whac-A-Mole Sucart. The month earlier, he and his wife, Carmen, had filed for bankruptcy. They owed $1.6 million, most of it a result of property foreclosures, since the Sucarts had bought big right before the Miami housing bubble burst.
The filings reveal a modest, 2004 Toyota Sequoia–driving existence for a superstar ballplayer’s embattled right-hand man. One of his biggest expenses was a $600 monthly tuition to Westminster Christian School, where his son was hoping to be like Uncle A-Rod.
“I love him very much,” Rodriguez said of Sucart, but then confirmed that he would no longer be taking him on road trips: “I’m handling it.”
And on Thanksgiving 2011, he fired the cousin who had been his professional shadow since his days as a rookie in Seattle, and a brother figure since they were scrambling around that little apartment in Washington Heights. A person close to Rodriguez says it wasn’t the increased scrutiny that caused the superstar to can Sucart. According to the source, Rodriguez believed Sucart was mismanaging his money. And Sucart’s burgeoning role as Bosch’s recruiter was threatening Rodriguez. The source says that Sucart was using Rodriguez’s name as a lure for other players, including Yankees teammate Francisco Cervelli, unbeknownst to the superstar. “Alex didn’t feel like he could trust the guy,” the source says of Sucart.
The arbitration transcript obtained by these authors supports the assertion that Sucart was attempting to make a living as a major league handler beyond Rodriguez. In May 2012, according to a letter entered into evidence in the arbitration, an attorney wrote to Major League Baseball “complaining about the ban on Mr. Sucart from major league facilities,” Rob Manfred testified. This was the year after Rodriguez fired him.
Manfred says he was “mildly amused” by the letter’s tone. He wrote back saying that if Sucart met with league officials, they would “evaluate” the ban. Neither Sucart nor his attorney ever responded.
Throughout that 2012 season, during which Rodriguez had struggled with the hand injury and elusive power, the superstar was now the one constantly texting Bosch and speaking to him on the phone, according to an arbitration document. “Do you think they are going to test?” Bosch asked Rodriguez, on a day in late spring training in which the Yankee tried out the brand-new Miami Marlins park by knocking in three runs. “If by any chance they make you piss, wait the longest you can and don’t use the pink until after,” Bosch advised a few days later.
As the season started, Bosch wrote treatment notes to himself concerning “Caciques/AROD,” next to those about Melky Cabrera and Yasmani Grandal. “He is paid through April 30th. He will owe May 1 $4,000 + new fee + $800 of old exp[enses] + new exp[enses]; I need to see him between April 13-19,” Bosch wrote of an upcoming Yankees homestand in New York. “Deliver troches and pink cream + mo[nth] of May has 3 weeks of Sub-Q,” he added, using his abbreviation for “subcutaneous,” meaning anything shot under the skin—which is how Bosch administered HGH and peptides.
The “new fee” likely referred to Bosch’s post-Sucart monthly charge: $12,000.
When Rodriguez asked whether he could still use the “pink”—meaning Bosch’s complex testosterone cream—even if he was required to piss after a game (“11pmish”) Bosch assured him: “No worries . . . good to go.” Rodriguez then instructed Bosch to “erase all these messages.”
But even with Bosch as his full-time PEDs butler, there is evidence that Rodriguez sought out an even more toxic personality for help with his regimen. Victor Conte, the former BALCO chief convicted of steroid peddling, later said that for months in the spring of 2012, he had received phone calls from Bill Romanowksi, the unhinged former NFL player investigated for his former ties to the Bay Area PED clinic.
Since being released from prison, Conte runs a company selling what he says are legal supplements. Now Romanowski explained tha
t he was buddies with Rodriguez, who was seeking “legal” supplements, Conte later claimed. Romanowski wanted Conte to fly to New York or Los Angeles to meet Rodriguez, but the erstwhile steroid dealer declined—and made it clear he wasn’t in his former line of business. “I clearly told Romo it was about legal performance enhancement,” Conte later said.
But in May 2012, Romanowski and his edge-seeking superstar associate showed up unannounced at his company’s Bay Area offices, Conte says. Rodriguez hid in a Cadillac Escalade while Romanowski made sure the parking lot was clear of prying eyes. Rodriguez and Conte spoke for forty-five minutes about supplements; Conte says he told the Yankee to eschew a certain kind of calcium supplement and to use a protein that fixes muscle tears overnight.
After Rodriguez skulked away, Conte says he spoke on the phone with Anthony Bosch about the star client. Bosch’s own records corroborate the correspondence between the two PED kingpins: He wrote Conte’s name in his books, along with his San Francisco–area code cell phone number.
Rodriguez knew how risky his movements were. “I can’t have any trace of Victor Conte,” the BALCO chief’s daughter, Veronica Conte, says Rodriguez remarked of keeping their association a secret. And after the bizarre consultation, his dealings with Bosch were the same strange cocktail of paranoia and recklessness.
In text messages, Rodriguez and Bosch referred to Conte’s plan as the “VC protocol,” according to evidence filed in the later arbitration case. It was this protocol that Bosch said he administered in June 2012, when he met Rodriguez at his new home on Bank Street in Greenwich Village, according to a source familiar with his testimony. Rodriguez had multiple little dogs, and in the basement of his town house he had installed a leased toy inspired by Bosch’s treatments: a hyperbaric chamber.
“Why don’t we do tomorrow night in Atlanta,” Rodriguez texted Bosch that same month, according to messages later entered into evidence. Bosch dutifully met Rodriguez at the Loews Hotel on Peachtree Street—room 1528—where the third baseman was staying during a road series against the Braves. “Try to use service elevators,” Rodriguez warned him then.
On such clandestine meetings, Bosch sometimes wore a hoodie and sunglasses. “Careful. Tons of eyes,” Rodriguez texted. “Don’t tell anyone your full name,” he told Bosch another time, when the latter dropped a testosterone-laden care package of two “night creams,” two “morning creams,” and “a few yellows”—meaning Cialis—at Rodriguez’s Miami Beach home, according to Bosch’s later arbitration testimony.
In September 2012, Rodriguez took a quick trip to Miami, where he met Bosch at a Starbucks. “Go straight to bathroom,” Rodriguez texted. In the Starbucks bathroom, Bosch gave him testosterone cream and morning cream, according to his arbitration testimony. Rodriguez gave him cash.
Their interactions were a cocktail of recklessness and exactitude. “Let’s go over it again,” Bosch texted him at one point.
Rodriguez replied: “Okay, gummy in the a.m., then liquid at 6:30 p.m.”
“No mistakes,” Bosch cautioned him. In text messages, they used the mantra “zero tolerance.” It referred to MLB’s drug policy and to their own tolerance for blunders that would get them caught.
When Bosch slipped out of their transparent code for PEDs in one text, Rodriguez scolded him. “Not meds dude,” Rodriguez warned. “Food.”
• • •
Of course, Rodriguez must have been concerned by a rash of failed tests by close major league colleagues. In August 2012, his former teammate and Miami workout partner Melky Cabrera had been suspended for testing positive for unnatural testosterone levels, as had Bartolo Colon. Immediately after the end of the postseason, former UM catcher Yasmani Grandal was suspended for the same reason. Even if Rodriguez didn’t know these friends were Bosch clients—which is unlikely—he certainly knew that one of the main ingredients in the Biogenesis regimen was testosterone.
But Bosch was an expert at blaming his own patients when they failed tests. Most baseball players were sloppy, but Rodriguez was a control freak. If he followed Bosch’s down-to-the-minute doping instructions, with twenty-four-hour care and advice from the fake doctor in Miami, Rodriguez had no reason to think that he would fail a test. After all, by the dismal beginning of the League Championship Series against the Tigers, Rodriguez had taken nine random drug tests since hiring Bosch. He had pissed clean each time. And in the end, his desire for the explosive feeling of Bosch’s synthetic edge conquered any paranoia at getting caught.
When the Yankees landed in Detroit to continue the series, Bosch traveled there as well. Rodriguez didn’t play at all on October 16 at Comerica Park, the third game of the Series and the Yankees’ third loss.
In his arbitration testimony, according to a source familiar with the proceedings, Bosch described meeting Rodriguez’s girlfriend at the back entrance of the Detroit hotel where the third baseman was staying. After a circuitous route to Rodriguez’s suite, Bosch encountered a sour superstar eager to play and frustrated that he was being benched.
Bosch designed a two-day protocol for Rodriguez’s Detroit trip, he later testified. Concerned that Rodriguez would be urine tested, he kept it simple: just HGH and peptides. Sure enough, on October 17, with that night’s game postponed by rain, Rodriguez was subjected to a random drug test. As always, he tested clean.
On October 18, the fourth game of the series, Rodriguez pinch-hit for Ibanez in the sixth inning of a lopsided game. Missing his chance at cosmic payback, Rodriguez failed to get a hit in two at-bats and the Yankees lost by a score of 8–1. The Tigers had completed a four-game sweep to move on to the World Series, ending the most brutal season of Rodriguez’s career. Of course, things were about to get a lot uglier.
In November, Rodriguez went for a routine appointment with Dr. Marc Philippon, the Colorado surgeon who performed the 2009 surgery on his right hip. Now Philippon discovered the labral tear on Rodriguez’s left hip, which had been evident on medical records from Rodriguez’s MRI during the playoffs. He recommended immediate surgery, which would keep Rodriguez sidelined through much of the 2013 season. When team officials broke news of the injury to the press, they also disclosed to reporters that Rodriguez had requested the MRI after Game Three of the Division Series against the Orioles.
“Rodriguez only had an MRI on his right hip, which came out clean,” reported a December 2012 ESPN story. But according to his medical records, the radiologist had noted the labral tear in his left hip at the time, even if Rodriguez says Yankees doctor Christopher Ahmad hadn’t informed him or the team of the injury.
That the team doctor had allowed him to play despite the radiologist’s findings became, to Rodriguez, a sinister development. Then again, all aspects of the superstar’s relationship with his employer were about to take a very dark turn.
Near the turn of 2013, Bosch realized that his composition notebooks, which for years he had filled with information about his clients, had gone missing. He told Oggi Velazquez, who was apoplectic but told Bosch he would take care of it.
Velazquez’s relationship with Bosch had started as a patient, and then a partner. But it was clear that by now, Velazquez was a mercenary for Team A-Rod. All he wanted to know was what other records Bosch had that incriminated Rodriguez, and he demanded Bosch’s computer. Bosch, who soon went into a panicked hiding, refused to give him anything.
When word reached Rodriguez that records exposing his doping had been stolen by some underling named Porter Fischer, who had given them to a newspaper, he began to prepare for a public relations and legal war. Rodriguez believed that both MLB and the Yankees—with nearly $100 million still owed to him—would take this opportunity to try to push him out of the league for good.
He called Roy Black. The Miami attorney was a confidante of Rodriguez’s. He had held annual fund-raisers at his home for the superstar’s charity, AROD Family Foundation. And Black’s business card is the kind you dig out of the Rolodex when your high-profile life is exploding spectac
ularly.
Black had represented Kelsey Grammer when the Frasier star was dogged by a statutory rape accusation, Girls Gone Wild tycoon Joe Francis when he was charged with child abuse and prostitution, race-car driver Helio Castroneves when he was accused of tax evasion, and billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
If Roy Black was the legal brain, Oggi handled the extralegal matters. He went into full A-Rod goon squad mode. Multiple people—including Pete Carbone and Rob Manfred—claimed that over the hectic upcoming weeks, Velazquez threatened the lives of both Bosch and Fischer.
Rodriguez’s first orders of business were clear: Get the notebooks. And get Bosch to sign documentation that he had never provided Rodriguez with PEDs.
Jose “Pepe” Gomez, a Rodriguez confidante since their days as freshmen at Columbus High School, also sprang into action. As evidenced by his association with Sucart and Velazquez, Rodriguez appeared to be a magnet for criminals. Gomez’s record includes a crime spree when he attended college in Tallahassee. He was accused of passing bad checks at a Publix supermarket, and in 1997, Gomez sold a half pound of pot to a cop. Officers found a scale, cocaine, and some pills in his home, according to a police report. “I got in on a very bad crowd,” Gomez later wrote in an application for a state license. After being sentenced to sixty days in jail and two years home confinement, Gomez moved back to Miami and took some sports marketing classes. “I got married in Jan. 2003 to my high school sweetheart and I view life as a professional perspective,” Gomez wrote.
On paper, the former marijuana dealer was the senior vice president of Newport Property Ventures, Rodriguez’s real estate company. Rodriguez called him his “business agent.” But when your boss is Alex Rodriguez and trouble is in the air, the job can be flexible.
