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Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report |  | Author: Kirk Radomski
Publisher: Hudson Street Press
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $1.99
as of 3/19/2010 14:29 CDT details
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Seller: Bergie65
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 179765
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1594630569
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357640973
EAN: 9781594630569
ASIN: 1594630569
Publication Date: January 27, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781594630569 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
On a quiet street on Long Island early on a December morning in 2005, more than fifty federal agents stood outside a lovely new home waiting for the front door to be opened. When it did, there stood the central figure in one of the biggest scandals in sports history: Kirk Radomski.
Radomski was a regular New York kid who, from the age of fifteen had the amazing fortune of working in the Mets clubhouse. The focus of his job was to give the players whatever they wanted or needed—he got their uniforms ready, packed up their homes at the end of the season, cashed their checks, and helped them beat the drug tests that would have led to suspension. And at the end of the 1986 season he even led the World Champions down Broadway during their victory parade. Eventually, he graduated to helping in other ways: providing them with steroids and human growth hormones. By the time the Feds knocked on his door, he was the main clubhouse supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to almost three hundred baseball players.
Under threat of a long prison sentence—and after being identified by players he’d helped—he cooperated with Senator George Mitchell to produce the Mitchell Report, providing names and dates. Now he’s ready to tell the whole story to the world. Radomski made little money from these transactions, and in this stunning book he will recount what baseball knew about the problem, his life since the report came out, and who took what. This is the tale of a young man seeing his heroes turn into clay, and the degradation of a once great sport into the drug-addicted spectacle it has become.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Baseball and the Steroid Era. February 7, 2010
L. LeClair (Ellenburg, NY, US)
Great read for all baseball fans. Any knowledgeable
fan would indeed find this book very interesting
about America's past-time.
Even Playing Field December 3, 2009
Troy Modlin (Weston, Florida U.S.A.)
I enjoyed this book for many reasons. It gave some real insight into the state of the Baseball Players and the Major League Business of Baseball. It also hit me personally since I myself took legal supplements from GNC for nutritional purposes because I was a college baseball player myself. In fact the whole steroid era has been around since the late '80s. When I got to college in 1990 even the Athletic Training programs encouraged legal supplements which were later banned. Athletes do this to help improve themselves and trust their body's with so called experts. The U.S. Government FDA which allowed these supplements to be sold I feel should be put into the spot light more. Just to be clear, I am referring to the supposed legal precursor supplements to steriods. There is no question in my mind that steriods should be illegal and should be tested for. But as Kirk wrote, these Athletes were making millions of dollars and in order to maintain a leveling playing field and get a larger contract, they would do anything possible to improve their statistics.
This was an excellent book for baseball enthusiats who really want to get a fair history of the 1990's & 2000's. He does write too much on his so called expertise when it really was trial and error. He almost insinuates that he is in favor of steroids for athletes which I believe is wrong. The again, the real phillosphical question is what drugs or stimulants should be legal. Caffeine? Red Bull? Ripped Fuel? B-12? The FDA in my opinion helped cause this problem by relaxing it's restrictions on control of vitamins and supplements in the early 1990's.
 The Crime of Punishment July 27, 2009
James Street (Oakland, CA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I think three groups of readers will find Radomski's book worth reading.
The first group are former and current players, from the high school level to the major leagues. They usually want to know what the competition is doing and what is really going on in the sport they are currently playing, or have played in the recent, or even distant, past.
The second, larger group, are the fans who love the game as spectators.
A third group, who believe baseball is an important part of American popular culture, will feel obligated to read it, and I recommend they do. As a primary source, it is invaluable and professional historians and sociologists will know how to deal with it as such.
Dedicated baseball fans will, apparently, almost always want to shoot the messenger, Kirk Radomski, for telling them the unpleasant truth that many, if not most, of their heroes are liars and hypocrites who take illegal, performance enhancing drugs, and too often use corked bats to get more hits. And that these players get away with it because clubhouse personnel, including people like Kirk Radomski himself, help them get away with it.
Most of the (current) Amazon reviewers have either attacked Radomski's character directly or implied that his book is some kind of joke:
"Kirk Radomski and his Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report will be stashed away to be finished for another time; I will pick it up and finish it some other day. Maybe ..."
"One negative I can find is in the beginning, he overstates himself. He said HE led the Mets in downtown in their victory parade in '86. He thinks people think HE's the man who started the whole steroid rage."
"Radomski seems to think he was important because he spent time with big name athletes who made a lot of money."
"The author is a joke."
"The book was very very repetitive and in parts read like a high schooler had written it."
"There was an enormous ego present throughout the book, especially when he flaunted the contracts his clients received."
"Not recommended for young impressionable idealistic fans."
"Radomski constantly brags that he knows sooo much more than any ballplayer about the proper use of these *ILLEGAL-DRUGS*. This bellowing braggadocio... is repeated... not just once... but over... and over... and over... again."
" 'Everybody' is this guy's best friend in the book. Total phony. Not worth the money. Wait to buy until it is on the one dollar book sheld - shouldn't be long."
When you consider that Baseball Digest runs advertisements for funeral urns in the size and shape of baseballs with the names of favorite teams on them, it isn't hard to understand why the messenger is getting a few pitches thrown at his head. After all, when hundreds of thousands of fans are dedicated enough to have their ashes deposited in baseball shaped urns after they die, we're talking about serious business.
However, in spite of all the ruffled feathers, it's pretty clear that Radomski is telling the truth. For one thing, he doesn't have any reason to lie, while players have every reason. Also, while Radomski is no scientist, he is nevertheless a very intelligent guy. He didn't train as a biochemist so we shouldn't expect to hear his scientific opinion about the effects of hormones on biological systems. Radomski is, however, highly knowledgeable about the pragmatic EFFECTS of performance enhancing drugs and its clear that players knew this and therefore came to him to get the right mix to help them through the season.
The reader should not have to be reminded that most biochemists don't understand the biological mechanisms of performance enhancing drugs either, and that is why they are afraid of them. They don't know what their side effects will be twenty years into the future because they don't know precisely how they act on the body in the present.
But ethical issues are not different in baseball and baseball regulations aren't essentially different from other regulatory activities, from banning abortion and making suicide illegal to breaking up monopolies and setting speed limits for highways.
Baseball, however, has a unique position in American culture even though its rules are, more or less, arbitrary. It's not written in stone, for example, that first base should be 90 feet from home base or that the distance to left field should be 200 feet or 500 feet. These things are all part of an American ritual and when they change they must change with the appropriate amount of mumbo jumbo and finally, with the consent of most of the fans and players.
Clearly, there is nothing ethically distasteful about using corked bats or even aluminum bats that weigh half as much as wood bats but are twenty inches longer. And there is nothing ethically wrong with changing baseballs to that they will travel twice as far or half as far when hit, or making them bigger or smaller. It's really just a matter of what fans and players think will make the game interesting.
The use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports has to clear two hurdles. The first is the hurdle of baseball tradition just mentioned. The second it the hurdle of government regulation, in general.
The government allows nicotine and alcohol but bans marijuana and cocaine and allows creatine and amino acids but bans human growth hormone and steroids. These decisions are not completely arbitrary and they aren't completely rational either and individual citizens have every right to disagree with them and even break the rules if they feel it is in their best interest, or in the best interest of society, to do so. But for any law or rule, if lawbreakers are caught, they are punished, and judges don't usually listen to lawyers who try to argue that the law itself is incorrect.
But then again, judges don't seem to be inclined to prosecute those who use illegal drugs to the same extent they punish those who provide them, probably because the law has always been prejudiced towards the rich and powerful and prejudiced against the poor and powerless.
Radomski is lucky he only got five years probation, even though the only punishment Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will get is not getting into the Hall of Fame.
In his poem The Wolf and the Lamb, Jean de la Fontaine said it a very long time ago, echoing the ancient Greek Aesop, "The reasoning of the strong is always better than the reasoning of the weak."
Enjoy the game for what it is March 6, 2009
Tony
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. Radomski didn't do this because he was making a whole of money from his operation, as he said time and time again, he started out selling steroids to help out a friend. Word got out he knew what he was talking about and it blossomed from there. With that being said, he really has no reason to lie and this book becomes credible, at least in my eyes.
One negative I can find is in the beginning, he overstates himself. He said HE led the Mets in downtown in their victory parade in '86. He thinks people think HE's the man who started the whole steroid rage.
But I can look beyond that, and give him extra points because he actually explains what the different products do. HGH doesn't do anything except to help heal you faster. Why is this banned? Cortisone shots that are legal only mask the pain, which can lead to greater damage.
He really doesn't speak out against steroid use. He only says that youngsters shouldn't be messing around with the stuff. And there really isn't scientific evidence to prove the stuff is harmful. Of course, the guys who have died (Benoit, Alzado, etc) went WAY overboard and mixed steroid products together and totally abused it.
Bottom line is if you think only the guys getting caught are using these "enhancements", you're as ignorant as Bud Selig.
P.S. A lot of players are named in this book, but David Segui comes out of it as man with integrity.
Radomski's Calm Approach Deserves Consideration March 1, 2009
David Ezra (Irvine, CA, USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
For anyone seriously interested in baseball's steroid situation, this is essential reading. To be sure, the book has its flaws, including the author's frequent reminders of his many self-perceived good qualities. As we might expect from a person who made it his life to serve professional athletes, Radomski seems to think he was important because he spent time with big name athletes who made a lot of money. And like other "trainers," Radomski seems to want a lot of credit for what "his guys" accomplished on the field.
But the flaws are easily tolerated, and what cannot be ignored is the way this book pushes the debate on steroids and human growth hormone. Like Jose Canseco, Radomski sees the substances so many have harshly condemned as things that enhanced player health. According to Radomski, Senator Mitchell was surprised that he "continued to defend the use of steroids and growth by baseball players."
While stories about Radomski's relationships with various athletes probably fill too many pages, here's a very knowledgeable user and observer who says "growth hormones increased a player's healing ability." He says that although HGH doesn't "build muscle like steroids," it allowed athletes to "play at the peak of their abilities every day without enhancing their performance." Radomski sees HGH as something that let's the body heal more quickly than normal. Since "growth hormones promote healing while cortisone simply reduces pain," Radomski can't help but wonder why HGH is still illegal.
After spending a few pages echoing themes that are more fully explored in "Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment" (Triumph Books 2008) (regarding some of the many reasons for increased home run figures that have nothing to do with steroids), Radomski says he is convinced that there "was never any crisis in confidence about the integrity of the game on the part of either the players, or really, the public." He argues that amphetamines (which were illegal but allegedly used by most of the players most of us regard as 100% legitimate) have a more immediate and direct impact on performance than steroids. Holding little back, Radomski concludes that "baseball has always tolerated cheating."
What is likely to be important about this book is not Radomski's personal role in distributing steroids and HGH to so many players. Instead, the thing that will probably make this book memorable is Radomski's willingness to challenge the prevailing conventional wisdom -- a conventional wisdom that simultaneously sees steroids as magical substances that can turn a Clark Kent into Superman and poisons so dangerous even responsible adults who have to use their bodies to make a living shouldn't be allowed to take them. As Dr. Jesse Haggard points out in "Demystifying Steroids" (Author House 2008), "Proper use of steroids may offer significant quality of life improvements to both individuals and society as a whole. . . . [A]dditional research involving steroids [may] help us advance our understanding of the human body and possibly unlock our true human potential."
Radomski may be wrong, but his book offers another informed and clear voice that may ultimately add some serious thought to today's overly emotional public debate.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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