Alex Rodriguez initially believed using performance-enhancing drugs would give him an energy boost, the scandal-scarred New York Yankees slugger said on Tuesday.
Rodriguez told a packed news conference at the Yankees training facility that he and his cousin began taking the drugs in 2001.
“My cousin would administer it to me but neither of us knew how to use it properly, proving just how ignorant we both were,” Rodriguez said. “It was at this point we decided to take it twice a month for about six months during the 2001, 2002 and 2003 seasons.”
PHOTO: AP
In an interview with ESPN last week, he admitted he had used performance-enhancing drugs from 2001 to 2003.
His comments came in response to a report that he had tested positive for the steroid Primobolan and for testosterone in a confidential doping survey in 2003.
Rodriguez said the substance he took was called “bole” and that his cousin gave him injections.
Rodriguez said his cousin bought the drugs over-the-counter in the Dominican Republic, adding that it was his cousin’s “understanding” that it would give Rodriguez “a dramatic energy boost and was otherwise harmless.”
In related news, the judge in Barry Bonds’s perjury trial ruled on Tuesday that defense lawyers cannot ask prospective jurors about Rodriguez and his recent admission that he used steroids.
Judge Susan Illston also said during a preliminary hearing ahead of the March 2 trial that Bonds’s former trainer Greg Anderson would have to state prior to the trial whether he would testify against his childhood friend.
Anderson spent more than a year in jail because he refused to cooperate with prosecutors when the case was before a grand jury, and he has vowed never to testify against Bonds.
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