Alex Rodriguez has admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-2003, ESPN is reporting.
Those were the first three seasons of Rodriguez's then-record 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers. Rodriguez won his first AL MVP award in '03, his last year with the Rangers, before being traded to the Yankees prior to the start of the 2004 season.
On Saturday, Sports Illustrated broke the news that Rodriguez had tested positive for two anabolic steroids in 2003. When reached for comment at a Miami gym last Thursday, Rodriguez told an SI reporter "You'll have to talk to the union" and "I'm not saying anything."


During the interview with ESPN's Peter Gammons, Rodriguez said, "When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, felt all the weight of the world on top of me to perform and perform at a high level every day. It was a different culture. I was young, I was stupid and I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time and I did take a banned substance. For that, I'm very sorry and deeply regretful, although it was the culture back then in major league baseball overall, it was very ... I just feel that ... I'm just sorry. I'm sorry for that time, I'm sorry to the fans I'm sorry to the fans in Texas. It wasn't until then that I thought about substance of any kind, and since then I've proved to myself and to anyone that I don't need any of that."
When asked if his usage took place from 2001-2003, Rodriguez said, "That's pretty accurate."


Gammons then asked, "What substances were you taking?" Rodriguez responded, in part, "I'm guilty for being negligent, naïve, not asking the right questions. To be quite honest, I don't know exactly what substance I was guilty of using."


Rodriguez tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan, an injected or orally administered drug. According to SI's report, Primobolan "is detectable for a shorter period of time than the steroid previously favored by players, Deca-Durabolin."


Steroids have been banned in baseball since 2001, but there was no testing for it until 2003, when survey testing was done to determine if the game needed to adopt a permanent testing policy. Rodriguez's name was on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. There were no penalties for players who tested positive and the names of those players were supposed to remain anonymous, but federal agents, using search warrants, seized those test results from one of the two labs MLB had used in connection with the '03 testing as part of the government's BALCO investigation.


In 2000, his last year in Seattle, Rodriguez batted .316 with 41 home runs and 132 RBIs. In 2001, his first season in Texas, Rodriguez set a career high with 52 home runs while batting .318 with a .622 slugging percentage, the second-highest number of his career. The following season, he established a new career high with 57 home runs, adding 142 RBIs and a .623 slugging percentage. In 2003, he dropped to .298 with 47 home runs and 118 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage. In 2004, when Rodriguez says he was not taking any performance-enhancing drugs, he hit .286 with 36 homers, 106 RBIs and a .512 slugging percentage and .375 on-base percentage. The latter two numbers were his lowest single-season marks since 1999.

Monday, February 9, 2009
A-Rod admits, regrets use of PEDs
ESPN.com

His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001. "When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, felt all the weight of the world on top of me to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. An extended interview will air on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. ET. "Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. "I did take a banned substance. For that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful." Rodriguez's admission comes 48 hours after Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez was on a list of 104 players who tested positive for banned substances in 2003, the year when Major League Baseball conducted survey tests to see if mandatory, random drug-testing was needed in the sport. Sources who know about the testing results told SI that Rodriguez tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan, an anabolic steroid. In his ESPN interview, Rodriguez said he did not know exactly which substance or substances he had taken. In 2003, there were no penalties for a positive result. "To be quite honest, I don't know exactly what substance I was guilty of using," Rodriguez said. He blamed himself and his $252 million contract he signed with the Texas Rangers in 2001 for his decision to use performance-enhancing drugs. "Overall, I felt a tremendous pressure to play, and play really well" in Texas, the New York Yankees third baseman said. "I had just signed this enormous contract I felt like I needed something, a push, without over-investigating what I was taking, to get me to the next level." Rodriguez added: "I am sorry for my Texas years. I apologize to the fans of Texas." Rodriguez, who joined the Yankees for the 2004 season after a trade from Texas, said "all my years in New York have been clean." He also described the recent turn of events as the biggest challenge of his life but added it felt good to be honest about what he's done in the past. "It's been a rough 15 months here for me," Rodriguez said. "I was stupid for three years. I was very, very stupid." He also said: "The more honest we can all be, the quicker we can get baseball [back] to where it needs to be." Rodriguez said he stopped taking substances after injuring himself at spring training in 2003 with the Rangers. "It wasn't a real dramatic day. I started experimenting with things that, today, are not legal," he said, "that today are not accepted ... ever since that incident happened, I realized that I don't need any of it." He said the culture earlier this decade of taking performance-enhancing substances was "prevalent." "There were a lot of people doing a lot of different things," Rodriguez said, noting that he wasn't specifically pointing out the Rangers. Rodriguez said he was told by Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the MLB Players' Association, that he might, or might not, have tested positive in the 2003 survey. That conversation happened during the 2004 season. A source told ESPN on Saturday that Rodriguez knew he had failed the test. "I had never heard anything since," he said. He said he didn't know for sure he had failed a test until Sports Illustrated contacted him last week. Rodriguez also said of his 2007 interview with Katie Couric on "60 Minutes," when he denied ever using steroids, that "at the time, I wasn't being truthful with myself. How could I be truthful with Katie Couric or CBS?"