Although the main events happened a decade ago, ESPN's investigative arm has obtained 1400 pages of DEA documents from their investigation and done a bunch of interviews and uncovered new names of athletes who were involved. It's a good read. It's broken into a bunch of sub-stories, each with different protagonists. One is about Manny Ramirez, and how much he was spreading the Biogenesis gospel around MLB. Another is about A-Rod, another about Melky Cabrera, another about Ryan Braun. They're individually not too big, but collectively it's an impressive array of evidence they've assembled.
https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/36055058/biogenesis-america-tony-bosch-peds-fallout-10-years-later
I haven't finished it all, but there's crazy stuff there. From the Manny story alone:
- Manny first contacted Tony Bosch "late in 2007" (!), even though his first suspension for PEDs didn't happen until 2009. Unclear whether Manny was using at the time of his iconic walkoff HR to beat the Angels, but the interview notes assert that he fueled Manny's renaissance 2008 season.
- That timing was per Bosch. Manny, for his part, insists it didn't start until after the 2008 season, that their first meeting was October 2008. But Bosch remembers treating Manny at his apartment at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, i.e. prior to the 2008 Jason Bay trade that sent Manny to LA.
- Bosch said the first thing they did for Manny was a blood test, which strongly suggested he had destroyed his body with past steroid use. And that after being pressed, Manny admitted to having used Winstrol "for a long time".
- Their meetings were corroborated by contemporaneous notes and by Bosch's former girlfriend
- Bosch says Scott Boras had him create a chart for Manny (which ultimately implicated him using HCG) and that he had a meeting in his office with Boras or another player representative (Boras denies this).
- Manny's proselytizing ended up convincing A-Rod to give it a shot.
- Federal authorities wouldn't comment specifically on the details reported but did say they found Bosch to overall have been truthful in his interviews.
The thing I don't quite follow is the pre-Biogenesis use by Manny, which Bosch allegedly uncovered in his tests, that Manny's testosterone production had been destroyed by chronic steroid abuse and so most of what he had to do for him was rebuild his body's production of it. How could he have been careless (in his typical Manny Being Manny sort of way) with Bosch's instructions such that he got caught in 2009 and 2011, but been abusing the most common athlete PED of all (Winstrol) for years prior and never having gotten caught? I'm not saying it's unbelievable - the article is very credible to me - but that could easily be a half-truth or guess by Bosch, secondhand, whereas his work with Manny from 2008-2012 was of course firsthand.
For his part, Manny's remarks to the reporter who did this story were:
Anyway, lots to dig into here.
https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/36055058/biogenesis-america-tony-bosch-peds-fallout-10-years-later
I haven't finished it all, but there's crazy stuff there. From the Manny story alone:
- Manny first contacted Tony Bosch "late in 2007" (!), even though his first suspension for PEDs didn't happen until 2009. Unclear whether Manny was using at the time of his iconic walkoff HR to beat the Angels, but the interview notes assert that he fueled Manny's renaissance 2008 season.
- That timing was per Bosch. Manny, for his part, insists it didn't start until after the 2008 season, that their first meeting was October 2008. But Bosch remembers treating Manny at his apartment at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, i.e. prior to the 2008 Jason Bay trade that sent Manny to LA.
- Bosch said the first thing they did for Manny was a blood test, which strongly suggested he had destroyed his body with past steroid use. And that after being pressed, Manny admitted to having used Winstrol "for a long time".
- Their meetings were corroborated by contemporaneous notes and by Bosch's former girlfriend
- Bosch says Scott Boras had him create a chart for Manny (which ultimately implicated him using HCG) and that he had a meeting in his office with Boras or another player representative (Boras denies this).
- Manny's proselytizing ended up convincing A-Rod to give it a shot.
- Federal authorities wouldn't comment specifically on the details reported but did say they found Bosch to overall have been truthful in his interviews.
The thing I don't quite follow is the pre-Biogenesis use by Manny, which Bosch allegedly uncovered in his tests, that Manny's testosterone production had been destroyed by chronic steroid abuse and so most of what he had to do for him was rebuild his body's production of it. How could he have been careless (in his typical Manny Being Manny sort of way) with Bosch's instructions such that he got caught in 2009 and 2011, but been abusing the most common athlete PED of all (Winstrol) for years prior and never having gotten caught? I'm not saying it's unbelievable - the article is very credible to me - but that could easily be a half-truth or guess by Bosch, secondhand, whereas his work with Manny from 2008-2012 was of course firsthand.
For his part, Manny's remarks to the reporter who did this story were:
That's not exactly what I'd call remorseful, but it's a bit more introspective than we've gotten from many other disgraced figures like Clemens.
Anyway, lots to dig into here.
