Chapter[ VI. Incidents Providing Evidence to Baseball Officials of Players’ Possession
or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances ]
Section[ I. Investigation Following Rafael Palmeiro’s Positive Drug Test, May 2005 ]
I. Investigation Following Rafael Palmeiro’s Positive Drug Test, May 2005
On August 1, 2005, Major League Baseball announced that Baltimore Orioles
first baseman and designated hitter Rafael Palmeiro had violated the league’s joint drug program
and would be suspended for 10 games.271 Palmeiro subsequently acknowledged that he had
tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol, the generic name for Winstrol, but he
repeatedly denied that he had ever “intentionally taken steroids.”272
Palmeiro’s failed test result was until that time the most newsworthy suspension
under the joint drug program, given his career achievements. It prompted an immediate
271 Press Release, Major League Baseball, Rafael Palmeiro Suspended 10 days (Aug. 1,
2005).
272 See Jack Curry, Palmeiro Ends Silence on the Eve of a Report, N.Y. Times, Nov. 10,
2005, at D1.
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congressional investigation into whether Palmeiro had committed perjury when he testified at a
March 17, 2005 hearing of the House Committee on Government Reform that:
Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I do
not know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never. The reference
to me in Canseco’s book is absolutely false.273
In his book, Juiced, Canseco claimed that he had personal knowledge that Palmeiro and two
other players illegally used steroids under his supervision shortly after he joined the Texas
Rangers in 1992.274
The congressional investigation ultimately concluded that it was impossible to
determine whether Palmeiro had been telling the truth in his sworn testimony because, among
other things, the four-week detection window for Winstrol was not long enough to conclude that
Palmeiro had the steroid in his system at the time of his testimony, given the date of his urine test
in May 2005.275
Of significance to our investigation, however, was the information learned during
the course of the congressional investigation concerning the widespread and apparently open and
obvious self-administration, using hypodermic needles, of an unregulated substance imported
from the Dominican Republic labeled as vitamin B12. Congressional investigators looked into
the issue because Palmeiro told them that he had used injectable vitamin B12 provided to him by
273 H. Comm. on Gov’t Reform, Report on Investigation Into Rafael Palmeiro’s
March 17, 2005 Testimony Before the Comm. on Gov’t Reform, at 5 (109th Cong. 2005)
(“Palmeiro Report”).
274 Jose Canseco, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball
Got Big 135 (Regan Books 2005).
275 Palmeiro Report at 42.
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his Orioles teammate Miguel Tejada and that this might have been the reason for his positive
steroid test.276
According to the House Committee’s report, Tejada told investigators that he
generally brought injectable vitamin B12 with him to the United States when he returned each
season from the Dominican Republic.277 Tejada said that he gave vitamin B12 to three
teammates during the 2005 season, Palmeiro and Players A and B. In his own interview with the
congressional investigation, Player A said that he injected Tejada with vitamin B12
approximately 40-45 times during the 2004 season and approximately 30-35 times during the
2005 season until July, when he decided to stop doing so.278
Larry Bigbie, a former Orioles player who we interviewed in our investigation,
confirmed that he observed Tejada injecting himself with vitamin B12 in the clubhouse
restroom.279 The report that four players on a major league team were self-administering an
injectable substance should have been a cause of concern, even if the players said that the
substance they were injecting into themselves was vitamin B12. Indeed, the presence of syringes
in a major league clubhouse, by itself, should have been a cause of significant concern.
276 Id. at 19-20. During the arbitration challenging the positive steroid test, Palmeiro had
testified about receiving the vitamin B12 but did not assert that he believed it was the reason for
his positive drug test. Id. at 11.
277 Id. at 25.
278 Id. at 30. Player A gave the investigators a vial of the vitamin B12 that he had
received from Tejada, which was tested and found not to contain any banned substances. Id.
at 31.
279 Bigbie also told us that he had conversations with Palmeiro while they were both
playing with the Orioles in which Palmeiro asked him about his source of steroids and human
growth hormone (the source was Kirk Radomski) and how the substances made him feel. Bigbie
said that Palmeiro denied in those conversations that he had ever used performance enhancing
substances himself.
105
During the summer of 2005, Tejada met with representatives from both the
Players Association and the Commissioner’s Office, who told him he should stop injecting
himself with vitamin B12 and take the vitamin in pill form instead.280
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