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A simple request for good health
By Gene Wojciechowski
March 2, 2010
MESA, AZ — Alfonso Soriano would give anything, including some of his $136 million contract, if you could guarantee him what he hasn't had as a Chicago Cub... his health.
That's it. Just 162 games in which something doesn't ache, tear, strain, sprain or break. Guarantee him that and Soriano will cut the check right now. He's got the money. What he doesn't have is one Cubs season without a trip to the disabled list.
Sitting on a padded metal stool in front of his locker, Soriano needs only a moment to remember the last time he began a season without pain.
"It was 2006," he said.
Unfortunately for the Cubs, that was the season before he signed that 8-year, $136 million, free-agent deal to come to Chicago. The acquisition made some sense at the time, but the bloated contract now mocks the franchise as Soriano's production and durability continue to shrivel.
The DL checklist:
» Arthroscopic knee surgery in 2009.
» A broken bone in his hand and a calf strain in 2008.
» A hamstring strain followed later by a quadriceps strain in 2007.
The injured quad transformed Soriano from a greyhound on the basepaths to a mutt. It robbed Soriano, seemingly for good, of his difference-making speed.
"That changed him," said Cubs general manager Jim Hendry of the quad strain.
Soriano is now a $19 million-per-season shadow of his 2006 self, when he hit a career-high 46 home runs, stole 41 bases and played a career-best 159 games. Since joining the Cubs, his games played have gone from 135 to 109 to 117. He's set to miss the team's first two spring training games.
He can still hit, sometimes, but he can no longer run like Soriano circa '06. From 41 stolen bases in 2006 to just nine in 2009.
His days as a leadoff hitter feasting on fastballs are also done. Soriano will bat sixth in the 2010 Cubs' lineup.
"A good RBI spot," said Cubs manager Lou Piniella.
Soriano will return to left field, where he'll play on 34-year-old knees and legs that can't be pushed to the max anymore. At times it will look as if he's jaking it, but the simple, sobering baseball truth is that Soriano had a gear removed from his clutch.
This is the new reality for Soriano and the Cubs. So no wonder he says he would trade some of those millions to get his health back.
"Oh, definitely," he said. "If you're not healthy, I cannot do [anything]. When I'm healthy, I know I can be happy. I know I can enjoy myself and have fun.
"If I'm 100 percent with no pain, I think I can give you a lot of good moments and do good things for the team."
I show Soriano's 2009 numbers to a major league scout. Says the scout:
"He hit .241 -- geezus. He had 20 home runs and 55 RBIs in 447 at-bats. That is not even close to average. That's terrible. He had 118 strikeouts and 40 walks. Terrible."
In other words, the Cubs paid $850,000 per Soriano dinger last year. Worse yet, he hit 12 of those homers in his first 35 games, then only eight in his final 82 games.
Soriano was a defensive liability. He couldn't steal. His on-base percentage from the leadoff spot was a gruesome .295. He got hurt again.
And by the way, there are five years left on his deal at $19 mil per year.
But as Soriano's metrics track downward, his optimism tracks up. You can rip Soriano for his declining numbers, but he remains respected within the Cubs' clubhouse and organization because he doesn't phone it in.
When he says he would trade money for health, he means it. When he says he signed with the Cubs because he wanted to win a championship, no one doubts him. He is aware of his declining stats and of the boos often aimed his way at Wrigley Field.
"It's tough," he said. "[The fans] just think about what kind of money we make. But they don't know physically how it feels, what the sacrifices we have to do to play this game.
"Yeah, I hear [the boos], but I [don't] pay attention because that doesn't make me better."
And this from Hendry: "He's a lot better teammate and a more caring guy than you'd realize from his image. He really does give a damn -- and his teammates will tell you that."
Unlike Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano, whose knucklehead moments could take up 8 gigs on your hard drive, Soriano keeps a lower profile. He is a proud man embarrassed by the recent numbers on the back of his baseball card.
Ask Soriano whether Cubs fans have ever seen him at his best and he shakes his head.
"No, they not see it," he said. "Like I said, I played three years with injuries."
I've been a Soriano critic in the past because of his insistence that he hit leadoff, and a Piniella critic because he kept putting Soriano in the No. 1 spot. But to Piniella's credit, he finally pulled the plug this past July 4 -- Cubs' leadoff Independence Day.
Now Soriano knows his place in the lineup and his role in the offense. No amount of lobbying is going to change it. And to Soriano's credit, he's been receptive to the repair work new hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo has done on his swing mechanics.
"We got to get that 20 [home runs] into the 30s, and those [55 RBIs] into the 80s," Piniella said. "Those would be a nice goal for him. … He should be able to do that."
If the Cubs want to do better than the disappointing 83 games they won a season ago and end their 102-year World Series winless streak, they need Soriano. The 2006 version of Soriano would be nice, but that guy is gone.
"I don't like to think about numbers," Soriano said. "I just like to think about being healthy, be 100 percent and play 150 games, 162 games. I know if I can play healthy, I can put up some very good numbers."
Did he say 162 games? Where do the Cubs sign that deal?
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Beltran Interviewed in Galea Inquiry
By Michael S. Schmidt
March 2, 2010
The federal investigation of a Canadian-based doctor named Anthony Galea continued to take on a distinct New York tone on Tuesday as the third Met or Yankee in three days acknowledged that he had been contacted or interviewed by the authorities in connection with Galea’s activities.
Carlos Beltran, the Mets’ injured center fielder, told reporters at the team’s spring training facility in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that he had met with federal agents in recent days to discuss his interactions with Galea during the 2009 season, when Beltran was often sidelined with a bone bruise in his knee.
Beltran was apparently interviewed after federal investigators met with Beltran’s teammate, shortstop Jose Reyes, who went to see Galea last summer while he was sidelined with a hamstring injury.
During Reyes’s meeting with investigators, they asked him how he learned of Galea, and Reyes told them Galea had been recommended by Beltran, according to a person with knowledge of that interview. That, in turn, seems to have led investigators to Beltran.
Reyes acknowledged to reporters on Sunday that he had met with investigators.
Beltran’s turn came Tuesday. In between came Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who told reporters on Monday in the team’s spring training clubhouse in Tampa, Fla., that the federal authorities wanted to talk to him, too.
When reporters asked Rodriguez if had been treated by Galea, he responded: “I can’t really get into that. You’ll know within time, all at the same time.”
Galea, who is based in Toronto, has been charged by the Canadian authorities with conspiring to smuggle human growth hormone and other drugs into the United States. In this country he is being investigated by an assortment of federal authorities, including the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the United States attorney’s office in Buffalo.
In his remarks to reporters on Tuesday, Beltran said he was asked by federal agents if Galea had injected him with human growth hormone and that his answer was “of course not.”
“I just want to say that all my treatments were related to my knee; he didn’t inject me with H.G.H. or anything like that,” Beltran told reporters. “It was something that was related to my knee and like I say, when I was there, I was put in contact with the team; they knew what they were doing to me.”
Beltran played in only 81 games this season, and sat out from June 22 until early September with a bone bruise that proved resistant to healing. At some point during the season, although it was not clear exactly when from Beltran’s remarks, he decided to go outside the Mets’ medical staff and seek treatment elsewhere.
He turned to Galea, who he said “was one of the guys that was recommended, and by a lot of friends.”
“I got in touch with him and also put him in contact with the team,” Beltran said. “He was able to meet for maybe a month; he was able to put a program for me being able to rehab.”
Reyes, meanwhile, had been out since mid-May with a hamstring injury that also would not improve. So, Beltran said, he told Reyes about Galea.
“I say, ‘Reyes, give it a try, make sure, he helped out other athletes, so he might help you also,’ ” Beltran said.
When Reyes saw Galea last summer, he underwent plasma replacement therapy, a procedure that is not considered doping under baseball’s rules and has been aggressively embraced by Galea.
The procedure did not appear to do much for Reyes’s injury, although that might not have been of much interest to investigators. Reyes, too, said that the agents asked him if Galea had injected him with performance-enhancing drugs.
“I said no,” Reyes said.
What Rodriguez will tell investigators in a meeting expected to occur this week is unknown. The New York Times reported on its Web site Monday that Yankees officials had reached out to representatives of Rodriguez in December after the investigation of Galea became public.
They knew that Galea had worked closely with a chiropractor who monitored Rodriguez’s condition last season after he had hip surgery. The Yankees were concerned that Galea might have taken on a role in Rodriguez’s treatment.
The response they received from Rodriguez’s representatives was reassuring. Rodriguez had not met with Galea, they said.
But now the Yankees are not so sure that was the case, and on Monday they issued a statement that distanced themselves from Rodriguez, their highest-paid player, by stating that they had never authorized Galea to treat Rodriguez.
The Yankees would clearly like to know more, as would Major League Baseball, although both will probably wait until Rodriguez meets with federal agents before they attempt to question him. Rodriguez met with baseball’s investigators a year ago in the wake of his admission that he had used steroids in a period ranging from 2001 to 2003.
The investigation of Galea began in September, when one of his assistants was stopped at a border crossing in Buffalo. In the assistant’s car, authorities found H.G.H., other substances and a laptop computer with medical files.
The assistant, Mary Anne Catalano, is cooperating with authorities and has told them that Galea provided athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.
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