MLB: Cooperstown-bound Pudge throws book at Canseco’s steroid claim
Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, unequivocally denies ever using steroids in his new book, They Call Me Pudge.
“I never took steroids,” Rodriguez writes in the first chapter titled Hall of Fame and Clearing the Air. “Let’s make that as crystal clear as possible — I never took steroids. If anyone says differently, they are lying.”
The book, which he co-wrote with Jeff Sullivan, will be released on Aug. 1 but it’s already available for purchase online.
Before declaring he never took steroids, Rodriguez reminds the reader that he has never avoided answering the questions, especially when he lost 25 pounds before the 2005 season, which was right after Jose Canseco’s explosive book Juiced had been released.
Canseco claims in the book that he personally injected steroids via hypodermic needle into his Rangers team- mates Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Rodriguez after being traded to Texas in 1992.
Rodriguez, 45, says he lost the weight because of an intense training program his longtime personal train- er Edgar Diaz had him on and also on a lack of appetite while going through a divorce with his first wife Maribel.
“Looking back, I was probably depressed,” Rodriguez writes. “I wasn’t eating well, not so much bad food, just not eating much, not getting the protein I needed.”
Rodriguez was signed by the Rangers at 16 out of Puerto Rico and made his major league debut in 1991. He was a 14-time all-star and the 1999 AL MVP. He holds a slew of the major league records for catchers, including games caught (2,427), putouts, hits, doubles, runs and at-bats. He finished with 311 homers, 1,332 RBIs and a .296 career batting average.
He’ll be inducted in Cooperstown, N.Y., along with Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines, becoming just the second player to enter baseball’s shrine as a Ranger, joining Nolan Ryan — whose career started before Pudge was born. And yet they formed a battery 46 times in Texas. Ryan, inducted in 1999, wrote a foreword to They Call Me Pudge.