20 replies to this topic

[mikeford]

Pulled directly from the front page of DirtDogs. Didn't see a post regarding this, but if its a dupe or its mired somewhere in that 45 page quagmire of a Manny thread, Dopes feel free to send it to Valhalla.

Former Sox Infielder Lou Merloni Says the Red Sox, Under the Previous Regime (Led By Dan Duquette) Called a Meeting To Have a Doctor Speak to Players About the Right Way to Use Steroids (Merloni Did Not Specify the Year the Meeting Took Place)

Sat. May 9, 2009, Lou Merloni on Comcast SportsNet's The Baseball Show: "I'm in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning. I walk into that office, and this happened while I was with the Boston Red Sox before this last regime, I'm sitting in the meeting. There's a doctor up there and he's talking about steroids, and everyone was like 'here we go, we're gonna sit here and get the whole thing -- they're bad for you.' No. He spins it and says 'you know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean, if you're going to take steroids, one cycle won't hurt you, abusing steroids it will.' He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I'm with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said 'what the heck was that?' And everybody on the team was like 'what was that?' And the response we got was 'well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they're taking it the right way'... Where did that come from? That didn't come from the Players Association."

[bsj]

This has the potential to blow up into a major element to this story.

Isnt Merloni technically employed by the Sox? Surprised he was so candid with this.

[DLew On Roids]

He spins it and says 'you know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean

The only physicians who would say this are Dr. Nick Rivera and Dr. Leo Spaceman.

[shepard50]

If true, this would be the most egregious example reported of a team encouraging its players to use steroids. There is a lot of "blind eye", and don't ask don't tell stuff in the Mitchell report, but nothing where a team official actually explicitly condones the idea of PEDs to the players.

According to Wikipedia, Merloni works for Comcast Sports New England, and has quit NESN: link

[AlNipper49]

Merloni left NESN and trashed the team on his way out. Would fit the MO during his playing days.

[joyofsox]

So is even one media person going to follow up on Merloni's allegations?

[Adirondack jack]

This very well could be a cheap shot and/or a call for some attention by Merloni.

The handling of the PED issue has been atrocious every step of the way. The ivory tower the commissioner's office, media and the players association is down-right criminal. Where is the damage control? It seems like they will gladly allow this to be strung out for years, as they cling to the joke that is their testing policies, all while they let the players take the heat and sell the notion that this was an isolated player here and there.

The culture that festered for decades surely was not impeded by the people who stood to gain the most. It is laughable that every media story seems to pin the blame solely on the player while completely ignoring the others. It not like Boston was the only organisation that allowed and encouraged this to come about. Perhaps this will be the first domino that drops, in placing at least some of the blame somewhere else.

Edited by Adirondack jack, 10 May 2009 - 12:49 PM.

[joyofsox]

Nick Cafardo is on the case!

... Merloni said that in no way did anyone from the Red Sox organization, or the doctor who spoke to that team that day, ever encourage the use of steroids.

"It was like teaching your teenage daughter about sex education," said Merloni. "The organization acknowledged that there were likely players using steroids and basically if "you're gonna use them this is how you use them so you don't abuse them."

Merloni did not remember who the doctor was who spoke to the team but said that a former head trainer told Merloni that the team acknowledged that players were using them. Merloni said he couldn't remember whether the meeting took place in 2001 or whether it was in his first stint with the Red Sox in 1996-1997.

Dan Duquette:

"It's ridiculous. It's totally unfounded. Who was the doctor? Tell me who the doctor is? If there was such a doctor he wasn't in the employ of the Red Sox. We brought in doctors to educate the players on the major league drug policy at the time at the recommendation of major league baseball. This is so ridiculous I hate to even respond to it."

Troy O'Leary:

"Don't really remember anything like that. I remember the normal union meetings in spring training where they'd talk about drugs and steroids, and I remember doctors talking negatively about them, but I don't remember ever hearing anything like OK, this is the right way to do steroids. If that happened I missed that one. I'm afraid of needles so anything involving injection of anything, I wouldn't have done anyway."

[shepard50]

Huh.....I hope someone else with a clearer memory and less conflicts of interest is willing to come forward on this story. I would think it's better out and dealt with then a slow revelation over time.

Edit: joyofsox links faster than I do.....

Edited by shepard50, 10 May 2009 - 06:50 PM.

[yep]

...I would think it's better out and dealt with then a slow revelation over time...

Anything scandalous always is.

If the Red Sox had a doctor presenting information on how to use steroids safely/effectively/at all, that would be by far the most damning thing that any team has even been accused of doing. The Rangers were widely thought to have a steroid-laden clubhouse culture, but to my knowledge nobody has ever even accused team management of anything worse than turning a blind eye.

If the Red Sox had a doctor come in to give a "sex ed"-style or "drug awareness" presentation on steroids, that's a very, very thin line. Especially if the doctor took anything close to a "neutral" approach regarding moral/safety issues with steroids. It would be practically impossible for an Islamist mosque to host a purely neutral "informational" lecture on bomb-making dos and don'ts. For a baseball team in the height of the steroid era to distribute neutral "information" on steroids in anything other than an abstinence-only context would constitute acknowledgement to the point of acceptance and implicit advocacy.

[Van Everyman]

No one gets to the bottom of the story like Nick Cafardo.

Merloni left NESN and trashed the team on his way out. Would fit the MO during his playing days.

Care to elaborate? What was his MO? And what did he do to trash the team?

[behindthepen]

Obviously nobody bothered to actually read the Mitchell Report. There are several pages dedicated to the period in the late 90's when the MLBPA and MLB had doctors talking to players and teams about the "benefits" of steroids. Complete with the threats to people who questioned not only the science but the ethics of it.

See my post from Dec 2007. http://sonsofsamhorn...&...t&p=1293038

[yep]

Obviously nobody bothered to actually read the Mitchell Report. There are several pages dedicated to the period in the late 90's when the MLBPA and MLB had doctors talking to players and teams about the "benefits" of steroids. Complete with the threats to people who questioned not only the science but the ethics of it.

See my post from Dec 2007. http://sonsofsamhorn...&...t&p=1293038

Without having re-read the Mitchell report, was there actually something in there about team-sponsored or MLB-sponsored steroid presentations given to players?

I remember the winter meetings thing where owners and execs were reportedly given a presentation on steroids that included "benefits" of steroids, but I don't remember anything about actual steroid coaching administered to players...

Not that the league has much moral high ground without such allegations, but there is a big difference if there is hard, falsifiable evidence of the league or a team taking official action that gives players support, encouragement, or implicit permission to do steroids.

[behindthepen]

Without having re-read the Mitchell report, was there actually something in there about team-sponsored or MLB-sponsored steroid presentations given to players?

I remember the winter meetings thing where owners and execs were reportedly given a presentation on steroids that included "benefits" of steroids, but I don't remember anything about actual steroid coaching administered to players...

Not that the league has much moral high ground without such allegations, but there is a big difference if there is hard, falsifiable evidence of the league or a team taking official action that gives players support, encouragement, or implicit permission to do steroids.

you are right, I overextended there. Mitchell did not find evidence of or allegations of players getting guidance from the teams. But if you read the section starting on pg 77, it's pretty clear that the MLBPA and some people within MLB were pretty supportive of the idea of using PED's, with presentations saying that there is no known health risk, etc. Given that, to me it's not a stretch to believe what Merloni said actually happened.


Link to Mitchell Report http://files.mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf

[threecy]

I hope MLB invites him to come forward and share his information with them - if he's telling the truth, and I don't see why he'd make this up, something should be done by management.

Note that I haven't mentioned conducting anymore goat rodeos in Congress.

[brs3]

I hope MLB invites him to come forward and share his information with them - if he's telling the truth, and I don't see why he'd make this up, something should be done by management.

Note that I haven't mentioned conducting anymore goat rodeos in Congress.

I'm curious what could possibly be done by the Red Sox FO or MLB? It would seem, based on Troy O'Leary and Dan Duquette's statements, that there might be some difficulty corroborating the accusations from the Merloni PawSox Shuttle Service. A quick glance at careers of guys that played with Merloni indicate many of them were out of baseball by their mid 30s rather than having sudden changes that extended them much beyond their Sox years. Though, quite a few had good seasons in '98-'99 compared to the rest of their careers. Bragg, O'Leary, Buford, etc, all pretty much done by their mid 30s. Didn't Merloni dump on the Sox after his playing days too?

[SoxZen]

I hope MLB invites him to come forward and share his information with them - if he's telling the truth, and I don't see why he'd make this up, something should be done by management.

Note that I haven't mentioned conducting anymore goat rodeos in Congress.

Hoping that the MLB invites him to come forward and share? No, I would like the MLB to have him give a sworn statement under oath and indicate who the doctor was, the date or at least the year this meeting took place - if he cannot remember who the doctor was, he should be able to at least name some of his teammates. I'd think he at least remembers if Nomar was there or not.

As for not seeing why he'd make it up, I can think of lots of reasons to recall this story 10 years after the fact and bring it to light. Some are good reasons and very understandable, others are not so good or reassuring.

I'm all for hearing the truth, in fact I welcome some guidance in determining which things I saw on the field in the past dozen years were great baseball and which were better living through chemistry. That said, some vague recollection that is actually a damning accusation about your former employer really invites a lot of skepticism rather than an impression that I should trust every unspecific word and never suspect it could have been made up in part or whole.

[paulftodd]

Does anyone remember Manny Alexander and the bat boy from Dorchester and Paxton Crawford allegations? Where there is smoke there is fire. Steroids was rampant league wide, and surely the Red Sox were not free of steroid abuse. And Lou Merlonis buddy was Nomar who appeared topless on the SI cover showing his muscles in 2001 and then was cursed with a rash of injuries and DL stints. Could this have prompted the Red Sox desire to educate players on how to use steroids properly if they were gong to use anyways.

[threecy]

I'm curious what could possibly be done by the Red Sox FO or MLB?

MLB...this has little to do with the 2009 Red Sox - different players, different management, different owners.

[BigJimEd]

Speier has a partial transcript of Duquette and Merloni on EEI.

Duquette said that the Sox had a club policy of abstinence from steroids, and did not encourage their use, but did want to try to educate players about steroids to minimize the associated health risks. He also said that, in the absence of testing, executives were left to draw conclusions from changes in players’ physiques and jumps in performance (specifically citing Brady Anderson’s 50-homer season), and suggesting that he was “disappointed” that Roger Clemens‘ performance after leaving Boston so vastly exceeded his final years as a Red Sox, while suggesting that he “will have more to say about (Clemens’ PED use) in another forum.”
Here is a partial transcript (Duquette also writes on the topic here):

DAN DUQUETTE: All the medical people were clear on the policy of the club. I will say that I felt that it was really important to educate the players on the associated health risks associated with steroid use and abuse. Let’s face it, it was the player’s choice. It wasn’t a team choice. The team made their choice very clear. You can’t do it. It’s against the law, and it’s against Major League Baseball policy and team policy. But the players still had the choice to do that.

The club was never (encouraging players to take steroids). We had people come in and educate players about the risks of utilizing steroids. Yes we did. I thought that was very important. A lot of guys that started using steroids and didn’t have medical access to them, there was a lot of health risks to the users of steroids that were prominent in a lot of different sports.

LOU MERLONI: It was brought up in that teams, before steroids were illegal in the game of baseball, were aware of what was going on. We had numerous meetings talking about the dangers of steroids. People were realizing, listen, these meetings are not hitting home. People are still taking steroids. There was one specific meeting that I think a lot of people were surprised walking out of there, because with every comment about how they were bad for you, there was a ‘but.’ We were talking about, ‘Well, the one cycle won’t hurt.’ ‘It’s proven that you can stay on the couch, take steroids and gain strength.’

A lot of people walked out of that one meeting, saying, ‘Wow, that wasn’t all negative about steroids and it actually talked some positive about steroids.’ We just took it as, ‘We know some guys are taking, and if that’s the case, then we want to educate these guys not to abuse it, and to say, if you take one, you’re okay, but if you continue this process, it’s going to come down and hurt you. We’re saying, basically, organizations were aware of it.

DAN DUQUETTE: Absent a testing program at the major-league level, I thought the most important part of any program that a team could have was educating the players, educating players to the choices they were making, so that they could make an educated choice and avert the health risk. The comment made on Saturday implied that the club was encouraging steroid use or steroid abuse. That wasn’t the case.

....

[The_Powa_of_Seiji_Ozawa]

Merloni left NESN and trashed the team on his way out. Would fit the MO during his playing days.

That's what Duquette's Red Sox get for making a mockery of Lou Merloni's career.