Well, it happened. The steroid outrage has reached out and touched the Red Sox. Former Sox pitcher Paxton Crawford has come out with an admission. You can find it in the latest ESPNMAG issue, or ESPN Insider’s article.
Crawford had a career 4.15 ERA in 65 IP for us – 15 games, 11 started at age 23 and 24, and then completely fell off the map.
I was the type who was always in pain. During minor league spring training with the Red Sox in 1999, some of the other guys saw I was hurting. They told me that if I took this stuff, it would make the pain go away and cut my recovery time in half. Shoot, why not? I’m just a country boy; I didn’t even think twice. It seemed like everybody else was doing it, so it wasn’t a big deal, right? But steroids are like any drug: Once you try them and they make you feel good, you’re always going to want more. …
I was probably using the most back in 2001, when I made the Red Sox rotation out of spring training. About that time I was getting pretty big, and another player introduced me to human growth hormone, which had started to make the rounds in the majors. I got a kit with two bottles: One was filled with some kind of water, and the other was filled with these tiny crystals. I put a few drops into the crystals and — poof! — it became liquid. I thought, Boy, what the hell are you putting into your body? But I did it anyway.
Who else on the Sox in 2001 could have used HGH?
Who could it be?
Scott Hatteberg, Brian Daubach, Jose Offerman, Shea Hillenbrand, Mike Lansing, Manny Ramirez, Carl Everett, Trot Nixon, Dante Bichette, Chris Stynes, Troy O’Leary, Jason Varitek, Lou Merloni, Doug Mirabelli, Nomar Garciaparra, John Valentin … read the list here.
Names that for some reason jump to my mind: Dante Bichette, Jose Offerman, Troy O’Leary, Nomar Garciaparra. I say Nomar because he’s been riddled with injuries for a long time, and people have whispered about him in the past. For some reason, I think the most likely is Dante.
People talk about “‘roid rage,” and I was so sure the Deca would feed my aggression that I actually let up; I was going to the mound less pissed off than before. That’s when some of my teammates introduced me to greenies. …
One time, I walked right into the Red Sox clubhouse with a bunch of needles wrapped in a towel and left them on my chair. A few minutes later, one of my teammates came running over, saying, “Paxton, someone knocked your chair over and your freaking needles are all over the floor!” Man, we just died about that. He said it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
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