The Triumphant Red Sox Blog

You just knew this morning's report and the subsequent noontime announcement of Manny Ramirez' positive drug test wasn't going to be the end of the story. Sure enough, just after the shock (or, in my neck of the woods, unbridled elation) wore off, another shoe dropped: a report about precisely which banned substance was involved. (Note: the linked article has been updated several times since I started writing this post. The text quoted was present in the article as of the time I published.)

[T]esting by Major League Baseball showed that Ramirez had testosterone in his body that was not natural and came from an artificial source, two people with knowledge of the case told ESPN's Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn. The sources said that in addition to the artificial testosterone, Ramirez was identified as using the female fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG....

hCG...is typically used by steroid users to restart their body's natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle. It is similar to Clomid, the drug Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and others used as clients of BALCO.

If true (and controversial information from unnamed sources should be taken with a grain of salt, I believe), then it means that either 1) Manny took steroids and was trying to get his little friends working again, or 2) Manny took HCG instead of steroids.

So did Manny, in his released statement (also available at the link), lie? Maybe not, especially in the case of 1). He might have released the most brilliantly crafted denial since Bill Clinton talked about "that woman." To wit:

Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue.

Steroid use is known to cause hypogonadism, which certainly qualifies as a personal health issue, even if it was caused by the patient's own steroid use.

He gave me a medication, not a steroid...

Manny doesn't say he never took steroids, only that the substance the doctor gave him to treat his "personal health issue" — and for which he subsequently tested positive — was not a steroid.

I've taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.

Manny doesn't say he never took banned substances, just that he passed 15 drug tests over the past five seasons. That doesn't necessarily meant that 1) he took a number of other tests that he didn't pass, or 2) he didn't pass drug tests before that. Counting the 2009 season, "the past five seasons" would be 2005 through 2009. Not counting this season, 2004 would be included. But drug testing in baseball started in 2002. Penalties were triggered after the 2003 season, when more than 5% of the tests run were positive. In 2004, a first positive drug test carried a "penalty" of treatment only, no suspension or fine. Beginning in 2005, the current 50-game suspension for a first-time offense was adopted for steroids, a category in baseball's drug policy that includes certain hormones.

Don't think there isn't plenty more to come out on this story.

Labels: banned substances, ex-Sox