Over the weekend news broke that MLB and the Drug Enforcement Administration were investigating a clinic in Miami run by Anthony Bosch, a noted adviser and consultant to many baseball players. Bosch’s clinic has been associated with “anti-aging” therapies and he has been linked with PEDs. MLB reached out to the DEA because it does not have subpoena power and is interested in finding out the nature of Bosch’s association with ballplayers.
A report by the Miami New Times, which has been given patient records by an anonymous source, suggests that A-Rod and other ballplayers were, in fact, given HGH by Bosch. In A-Rod’s case as late as last year, long after he claimed that he had ceased using PEDs (A-Rod said in a 2009 press conference that he stopped taking PEDs in 2003 and hadn’t taken them since):
Yet there was his name, over and over again, logged as either “Alex Rodriguez,” “Alex Rod,” or his nickname at the clinic, “Cacique,” a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief. Rodriguez’s name appears 16 times throughout the records New Times reviewed.
Take, for instance, one patient list from Bosch’s 2009 personal notebook. It charts more than 50 clients and notes whether they received their drugs by delivery or in the office, how much they paid, and what they were taking.
There, at number seven on the list, is Alex Rodriguez. He paid $3,500, Bosch notes. Below that, he writes, “1.5/1.5 HGH (sports perf.) creams test., glut., MIC, supplement, sports perf. Diet.” HGH, of course, is banned in baseball, as are testosterone creams.
The New Times details multiple other records of banned substances, under either Rodriguez’s name or under his cousin Yuri Sucart. These include HGH, IGF-1, which stimulates muscle growth and is also banned and something called “troches,” which is a lozenge which releases testosterone. But there is evidence of more recent use as well:
The mentions of Rodriguez begin in 2009 and continue all the way through last season. Take a page in another notebook, which is labeled “2012″ and looks to have been written last spring. Under the heading “A-Rod/Cacique,” Bosch writes, “He is paid through April 30th. He will owe May 1 $4,000… I need to see him between April 13-19, deliver troches, pink cream, and… May meds. Has three weeks of Sub-Q (as of April).”
Also mentioned in the records are Melky Cabrera, Yasmani Grandal, and Bartolo Colon, all of whom have tested positive for PEDs in the past year. Nelson Cruz’s name has also popped up along with Gio Gonzalez.
