Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report by Kirk Radomski

From Barnes & Noble

When he was just 15, Kirk Radomski got the job that thousands of other Long Island teenagers dreamed of: New York Mets batboy and clubhouse attendant. At his new post, he did just what came naturally, doing the players' bidding in every possible way. Eventually, those tasks included helping the hometown favorites beat drug tests and keeping them supplied with steroids and human growth hormone. Perhaps not surprisingly, such zealotry soon came to the attention of the feds, who came knocking at Kirk's door in December 2005. In Bases Loaded, the central witness in the Mitchell Investigation describes how he became the not-for-profit clubhouse supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to almost 300 major league baseball players. A former superfan comes clean about a front-page scandal.

From the Publisher

Game of Shadows meets Ball Four in this explosive inside account of baseball's steroid era

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 ithas become.

Product Details