Attempts to eliminate anabolic steroid from sports in an effort to preserve athletes as role models for our children is a failed strategy. The real problem lies with a society that worships athletes as role models. Manufacturing a moral issue out of steroid use in professional sports is hypocritical when other “immoral” behavior by athletes is not subject to the same media scrutiny, Congressional hearings, and multi-million dollar federal investigations.
Yet performance-enhancing drugs and the “culture of steroids” is seen as evil and immoral. The demonization of steroids in sports is absurd in the face of such hypocrisy.
A co-defendant in the Plano steroids trafficking ring linked to a former Dallas Cowboys player has told investigators that he sold performance-enhancing drugs to Shaun Kelley, proprietor of the Houston weight loss clinic recently linked to baseball great Roger Clemens, according to the co-defendant.
The co-defendant indicated that the quantity sold was for personal use, “two or three vials here and there.” A second source close to the case corroborated the co-defendant’s statements.
The co-defendant told federal investigators in North Texas that he sold steroids to Kelley two months prior to the New York Times story linking Kelley with Roger Clemens.
David Jacobs’ six co-defendants include Amber Jarrell, Matt Williams, Brandon Smith, Juan Carlos Ballivian, Andrew Schenck and Jamie Mongeau.
Law enforcement doesn’t usually pursue personal use steroid cases . But it does not take much to turn a personal use steroid case into a “conspiracy to distribute” steroid case (e.g. 10 tablets of Dianabol).
Joseph Dion, currently a Miami-based personal trainer, told two Sports Illustrated reporters that he was the individual identified as “Max” in Jose Canseco’s book Vindicated. Canseco claimed that Max was a steroid dealer who provided baseball player Alex Rodriguez with steroids.
Dion has refuted Canseco’s claims and told Sports Illustrated that he is completely anti-steroid (”The man behind the Max,” April 18).
“That’s really, really funny because I am the one person that hates steroids,” Dion said. “I’m against it 100 percent. And, A-Rod, at the time that I trained him — and this I swear to God — was 100 percent against steroids. He was one of the hardest working guys, and most natural guy, that I’ve met in my life. He hated steroids. We talked about it.”
It remains to be seen how this latest revelation will affect the steroid witch hunt in baseball. Federal investigators are scheduled to meet with Jose Canseco on Tuesday to discuss steroids in baseball; investigators are expected to ask Canseco about Joseph Dion, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, and other Major League Baseball players.
When he meets with investigators on Tuesday, he could be in a vulnerable position, said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor.
“It sounds like the government is looking at Canseco as just a witness,” Richman said. “But a witness who proves uncooperative can easily turn into a subject or even a target if the government wants to push hard. And the range of statements that Canseco has already made in his book and to Congress will make it easier for investigators to pin him down, forcing him to either reaffirm past claims or explicitly deny them. He has far less wiggle room than witnesses who can fairly claim not to remember.”
In the case of Canseco, federal authorities are hoping that his unapologetic use of steroids will lead them not only to Max, but to other suppliers, according to the lawyer familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Canseco’s lawyer, Greg S. Emerson, plans to ask federal authorities for immunity so that Canseco does not risk incriminating himself. If a grand jury convenes in the Roger Clemens’ perjury case, Canseco may be subpoenaed to testify under oath.
“We trusted each other, we played a lot of golf together,” Canseco said. “His family knew my family. His wife and my wife at the time talked a lot and we shared private information, and, yeah, we kind of jested and joked about using steroids, but I never injected him, never supplied him, never saw anyone give him steroids and he never tried to acquire steroids from me. And I would try to actually give him information about myself, but he never seemed like he used it at all.”
Canseco then goes on to tell about the wonderful comraderie and high morality in Major League Baseball by explaining how Alex Rodriguez may have slept with his wife at the time.
“I started realizing that he somehow acquired her beeper number and her phone number and started calling her,” Canseco said. “I definitely believe and I know that something happened after that … “
“But you said, ‘You believe and you know,’ so which is it?”‘ Letterman asked. “You know for a fact or you believe something happened?”
“I know for a fact, but I think my ex-wife Jessica could answer that better,” he said. “You should probably have her on the show.”
Canseco re-visits Rafael Palmeiro’s testimony before Congress; Canseco believes there was a conspiracy between Rafael Palmeiro and Major League Baseball to cover up and suppress Palmeiro’s positive steroid test result in order to allow Palmeiro to credibly testify against Canseco before Congress. Watch the video at the Late Show with David Letterman website.
Anabolic steroids have been linked to Governor Eliott Spitzer. Steroid Nation reports that steroids caused (former) Gov. Spitzer to seek the services of new millionaire escort Kristen aka Ashley Alexander Dupree.
Once again, Roger Clemens and the Congressional Hearing bring the man down. Spitzer was testifying about ‘bonds’ (read ‘Bonds). Governor Spitzer became so distraught that he contracted with a ‘relaxation service’ known as the ‘Emperor’s Club’… The important thing was that as a Yankee fan, Eliot Spitzer became all stressed out about Roger Clemens’s steroids hearings performance. Further, the Governor testified about ‘bonds’. That stress led directly to Spitzer’s ‘relaxation therapy’ session with the ‘Emperor’s Club’ later than night.
Of course, this is clearly intended as a joke! Unfortunately, tenuous causal relationships between anabolic steroids and other side effects are often taken seriously.
We are still waiting for the media to find a link between anabolic steroids and the huge financial crisis involving Bear Stearns.
Reporters from around the country have descended upon Houston, Texas pursuing their steroid witch hunt against anyone who may have used steroids or could have potentially provided anabolic steroids to Major League Baseball players e.g. Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. The targets in their steroid investigation have expanded from fitness professionals Kelly Blair (of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness) and Shaun Kelley (of Shaun Kelley Weight Control) to at least one Houston-area physician.
While the New York Daily News admits they have no evidence that Shaun Kelley provided steroids to Roger Clemens, they do not hesitate to point the finger at Lisa Routh, M.D. of Brainwaves Neuroimaging Clinic in Houston who worked with Shaun Kelley.
Neither does the Daily News have evidence that Dr. Routh prescribed steroids to Roger Clemens or any major league baseball player for that matter. But they seem content to demonize her because she was outspoken in her defense of the use of anabolic steroids in medicine. She admits to prescribing testosterone and growth hormone to policemen, professional wrestlers, and people who work out in an effort to improve their quality of life. Furthermore, Dr. Routh proposed that professional athletes be permitted to use performance enhancing drugs under a doctor’s supervision (”Houston-area gyms part of drug culture beyond sports scope,” March 16).
Interviews with Routh, of the Brainwaves Medical Center in Houston, and with eight former and current employees of Kelley, reveal a corner of the fitness industry where the same drugs that are stigmatizing professional sports are seen simply as a lifestyle choice for others.
Routh told The News that she regularly prescribed testosterone and human growth hormone for a large number of Boston policemen, who “get on a frickin’ plane and come down here twice a year, for frickin’ growth hormone and testosterone.”
She said she prescribes other hormones for menopausal women and professional wrestlers - all in the name of quality of life. Furthermore she argued for legalizing such drugs in professional sports, provided athletes have medical care.
“We pay them ridiculously, because we expect performance, and I think the bottom line is safety,” says Routh, who proposes allowing big-league baseball clubs to contract with five or 10 doctors in every city who would be the only league-approved providers of drugs. Players caught going elsewhere for their ‘roids would get hit with a fine.
“If someone wants to use human growth hormone or a testosterone product, they need to be under a physician’s supervision,” says Routh. “If they buy stuff off the black market or off some gym rat and they’re not under a doctor’s supervision, they should pay a penalty, and they should get the penalty that hurts, in the wallet.”
The Daily News also persists in its efforts to tarnish and incriminate fitness professionals in Houston. They continued their attack on 1-on -1 Elite Personal Fitness (even though Kelly Blair categorically denied their allegations) by reporting that co-owner Kevin Schexnider was prescribed testosterone cypionate and Anadrol by Revolution Medical Center in Phoenix several years ago; further Schexnider knew former bodybuilder Craig Titus who is awaiting trial on murder charges.
The government is purportedly going to prove that Barry Bonds and other athletes used steroids due, in part, to an increase in the size of the head and feet.
In Thursday’s court filings, prosecutors said they will rely in part on Thomas’ body features to prove she used steroids. Similarly, they are expected to show a jury significant growth to Bonds’ head, feet and other body changes during the time he was alleged to have used steroids.
Sports journalists and laypersons have so frequently asserted that increased head circumference and foot size is a side effect of anabolic steroids, that the government thinks it is a documented fact.
Certainly, anabolic steroids can affect the size of body parts other than muscle tissue. Steroid use can result in reduced testicular size in male steroid users and clitoral enlargement in female steroid users. Do you suppose that the government will subpoena measurements of Barry Bonds’ testicles or Tammy Thomas’ clitoris to prove steroid use?
Nothing would surprise me given the scope of the federal steroid witch hunt. The federal government is desperately seeking to use perjury as the tool to make examples of steroid-using athletes given the monumental failure of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act to reduce or eliminate steroid use in professional sports.
Congress should simply subpoena all professional athletes from every sport to answer questions about steroid use under oath. “Springing the perjury trap” on steroid using athletes would be considerably more effective strategy than the flawed Anabolic Steroids Control Act.
The New York Times reports that IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitsky is making inquiries about several fitness professionals in the Houston area in an effort to substantiate the use of anabolic steroids and growth hormone by Roger Clemens in a possible federal perjury case. They have asked a former employee about Houston fitness guru Shaun K. Kelley, the owner of Shaun Kelley Weight Control.
Novitzky, who has spent the past five and a half years investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, maintains a lead role in the perjury investigation, the lawyers said, and is interested in questioning a number of people in Houston, including Kelley.
As a result of the New York Times story and Kelley’s implied association with Clemens and performance enhancing drugs, the blogosphere has already started digging up dirt on Shaun Kelley.
Kelley told the New York Post last night on the phone that he never sold performancing enhancing drugs.
“Roger Clemens has never been in my store,” Kelley told The Post in a phone interview last night. “I’ve never sold steroids or growth hormone.” […]
“That’s all the information these clowns from The Times have,” he said. “That is the weakest report I’ve ever seen printed. If all that they can come up with, they need to find new reporters.
“I will give the FBI a polygraph. I do not deal drugs. I’ve never done anything with Roger Clemens except shake his hand.”
Recently, Kelly Blair, another Houston fitness professional, made national headlines due to his association with MLB baseball player Andy Pettitte and alleged distribution of growth hormone and steroids; the media tried unsuccessfully to find links between Blair and Clemens but settled on trying to link him with a former pro bodybuilder awaiting trial on murder charges.
Obviously, the unwanted attention, unsubstantiated allegations, and government leaks by lawyers close to the investigation are bad for business in Houston fitness industry.
New York Yankees baseball player Andy Pettitte allegedly obtained human growth hormone from his father who obtained it from Kelly Blair who may have obtained it from pro bodybuilder Craig Titus. It has yet to be determined where Craig Titus obtained the growth hormone. Former IFBB Pro bodybuilder Craig Titus has been in jail awaiting trial in the murder of his personal assistant
Kelly Blair is the owner of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness in Pasadena, Texas. He attended Deer Park High School with Andy Pettite. Craig Titus is formerly from the Houston area.
According to the Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan Investigation website:
The Daily News reports some of the drugs came from steroid-user Craig Titus, a champion bodybuilder who is facing a murder trial in Nevada for the slaying of his former live-in assistant.
Kelly Blair is also allegedly linked to Roger Clemens son:
Also, Blair was reportedly seen working with Koby Clemens, the son of seven- time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, who was involved in a heated congressional hearing this past week. However, the Daily News reports that Koby Clemens, who is now playing baseball in the minors, hasn’t been linked to any illicit activity at the gym.
. Canseco says that baseball player Alex Rodriguez received steroids from “Max” (”
