By: E&P Staff In an article today for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who have broken several big stories in the Barry Bonds case (and had their own legal problems tied to that), named three more major league baseball players who have been involved with steroids or human growth hormone.
They are still-active outfielder Jose Guillen, former star San Francisco Giants thirdsacker Matt Williams, and journeyman pitcher Ismael Valdez.
They all bought performance-enhancing drugs in the period of around 2002 to 2005 from the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center, "which was targeted this year in a law-enforcement investigation of suspected illegal drug sales," the reporters point out.
"Some prescriptions for the three players were written not by a doctor but by a Florida dentist whose license later was suspended for fraud and incompetence, records show. The same dentist prescribed growth hormone to Paul Byrd, the Cleveland Indians pitcher previously identified by The Chronicle as buying nearly $25,000 worth of growth hormone through the same anti-aging clinic. Byrd acknowledged using the substance but said it was prescribed by a doctor to treat adult hormone deficiency, a rare condition that affects about 1 in 8,500 adults in the United States.
"The players' orders were detailed in records provided to The Chronicle by a confidential source, who said their purchases were consistent with an athlete's personal use of the drugs. The records included purchase and shipping orders, payment data, and buyers' birthdates and Social Security numbers."
The lengthy article is available in full at www.sfgate.com.
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