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Giambi had homered to win a game June 6, 2004, and driven in both runs in a 2-1 victory in the next game. He was not having one of his best seasons, but his average was .271 and the fans would soon elect him as a starter for the All-Star Game.
Barton Silverman/The New York Times
Jason Giambi signed with the Yankees after the 2001 season and hit 41 homers in each of the next two seasons.
That alone, Giambi implied, should have been proof that he had not lost much in the time period after he reportedly stopped using steroids. "If that was such an issue, the stigma and everything, I should have been terrible the whole year," Giambi said. "But I made the All-Star team and then I got sick."
After the 2-1 victory on June 8, Giambi said, he went back to his apartment and started throwing up. He thought he had a flu bug that was sweeping the clubhouse, but he did not get better. He kept playing, but he kept feeling worse.
During a series in Los Angeles, he visited the Dodgers' team doctor and told him he could not keep down food. His vision was so blurry he often could not drive. The doctor instructed him to see a specialist in New York, who told Giambi he had an intestinal parasite.
"It got to the point where I wasn't able to function," Giambi said. "Sleep until game time, if I could sleep."
He said he lost 10 to 15 pounds. He was able to drink protein shakes and maybe eat oatmeal, but nothing else. He sweated constantly. He sat out some games, played in others, but felt washed out.
On July 23, standing on second base in a game at Fenway Park, Giambi felt as if he would pass out. His eyes could not focus. He met with Joe Torre in the manager's office and told him he was scared.
"I can barely sit here in this chair," Giambi told Torre.
Giambi left the team for a series of tests - for cancer, mononucleosis, hepatitis and different parasites - in New York. The diagnosis of a pituitary tumor made sense to Giambi, because the pituitary gland controls so many bodily functions.
Giambi is aware of the perception that he developed the tumor because of steroids. The Chronicle story said that Giambi might have taken Clomid, the female fertility drug, and that medical experts had told the paper that Clomid can exacerbate a pituitary tumor.
But Giambi said doctors had assured him he had done nothing to bring the tumor on himself.
"They said, 'You get this,' " Giambi said. "You don't develop this. Everybody wants to try to associate something, but it doesn't do anything like that. You just have it. And as you get older, it gets bigger and bigger and it grows, and before you know it, it starts shutting down certain points."
Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a New York University medical professor and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, essentially supported that claim.
"I'm not aware of human growth hormone causing a tumor of the pituitary," Wadler said in a telephone interview. "I don't see how using performance-enhancing drugs could be related to developing a pituitary tumor. People develop pituitary tumors because they have pituitary tumors."
To fight the tumor, as The Daily News first reported, Giambi had to take a form of steroids called corticosteroids, which are not performance-enhancers. He admits, looking back, that he should have insisted on shutting himself down for the season. He tried to come back in September but was too weak.
"I looked in his eyes, I mean, deep pools, and I asked him, 'What are you thinking?' " Torre said. "He wanted to play and try to get it back and all that, but I knew better. He just looked empty. It was sad."
Giambi stayed with the Yankees through the playoffs and went home to Las Vegas, taking another month off and then resuming workouts with Alejo. The Chronicle story broke in December, and Giambi leaned on advice from his agent and the Yankees on how to handle the fallout.
By never directly admitting to steroid use, Giambi has not jeopardized the deal. The news media does not ask him about steroids because he will not address the issue, and even with the Balco case settled, Giambi will not publicly examine his past.
"It'll open up a whole big can of worms," he said.
For Giambi, it is better to focus on baseball. Early this season, he said, he worked so much with the hitting coach Don Mattingly that he needed two cortisone injections in his left elbow to combat tendinitis. And his body took time to re-adjust to the rigors of the regular season.
But even when his average bottomed out at .195 on May 9, Giambi could feel his old skills returning. He had no interest in a minor-league stint. He was still drawing walks, a sign that he was not anxious at the plate. He soon started hitting balls solidly, off the barrel of the bat, not the handle.
The power would be last to come, Torre felt, and it exploded in July with 14 homers, the most by a Yankee in a month since Mickey Mantle in July 1961.
Giambi wears No. 25 because the digits equal 7, Mantle's number. He pointed that out, tearfully, at his first Yankees news conference in 2001, sharing a moment with his father, John, who grew up a Mantle fan in California.
Now, through it all, Giambi is living the fantasy again. Fairy tales do not include words like steroids, but the subtext is there and Giambi knows it. If he does not exactly feel vindicated, he is proud of his success.
This is the clean Jason Giambi, he insists, and the clean Giambi is a star.
"I was always a great player," he said. "I never had any doubts. That's what kept me determined, because I knew, in me, that it was there."
Giambi had homered to win a game June 6, 2004, and driven in both runs in a 2-1 victory in the next game. He was not having one of his best seasons, but his average was .271 and the fans would soon elect him as a starter for the All-Star Game.
Jason Giambi signed with the Yankees after the 2001 season and hit 41 homers in each of the next two seasons.
That alone, Giambi implied, should have been proof that he had not lost much in the time period after he reportedly stopped using steroids. "If that was such an issue, the stigma and everything, I should have been terrible the whole year," Giambi said. "But I made the All-Star team and then I got sick."
After the 2-1 victory on June 8, Giambi said, he went back to his apartment and started throwing up. He thought he had a flu bug that was sweeping the clubhouse, but he did not get better. He kept playing, but he kept feeling worse.
During a series in Los Angeles, he visited the Dodgers' team doctor and told him he could not keep down food. His vision was so blurry he often could not drive. The doctor instructed him to see a specialist in New York, who told Giambi he had an intestinal parasite.
"It got to the point where I wasn't able to function," Giambi said. "Sleep until game time, if I could sleep."
He said he lost 10 to 15 pounds. He was able to drink protein shakes and maybe eat oatmeal, but nothing else. He sweated constantly. He sat out some games, played in others, but felt washed out.
On July 23, standing on second base in a game at Fenway Park, Giambi felt as if he would pass out. His eyes could not focus. He met with Joe Torre in the manager's office and told him he was scared.
"I can barely sit here in this chair," Giambi told Torre.
Giambi left the team for a series of tests - for cancer, mononucleosis, hepatitis and different parasites - in New York. The diagnosis of a pituitary tumor made sense to Giambi, because the pituitary gland controls so many bodily functions.
Giambi is aware of the perception that he developed the tumor because of steroids. The Chronicle story said that Giambi might have taken Clomid, the female fertility drug, and that medical experts had told the paper that Clomid can exacerbate a pituitary tumor.
But Giambi said doctors had assured him he had done nothing to bring the tumor on himself.
"They said, 'You get this,' " Giambi said. "You don't develop this. Everybody wants to try to associate something, but it doesn't do anything like that. You just have it. And as you get older, it gets bigger and bigger and it grows, and before you know it, it starts shutting down certain points."
Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a New York University medical professor and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, essentially supported that claim.
"I'm not aware of human growth hormone causing a tumor of the pituitary," Wadler said in a telephone interview. "I don't see how using performance-enhancing drugs could be related to developing a pituitary tumor. People develop pituitary tumors because they have pituitary tumors."
To fight the tumor, as The Daily News first reported, Giambi had to take a form of steroids called corticosteroids, which are not performance-enhancers. He admits, looking back, that he should have insisted on shutting himself down for the season. He tried to come back in September but was too weak.
"I looked in his eyes, I mean, deep pools, and I asked him, 'What are you thinking?' " Torre said. "He wanted to play and try to get it back and all that, but I knew better. He just looked empty. It was sad."
Giambi stayed with the Yankees through the playoffs and went home to Las Vegas, taking another month off and then resuming workouts with Alejo. The Chronicle story broke in December, and Giambi leaned on advice from his agent and the Yankees on how to handle the fallout.
By never directly admitting to steroid use, Giambi has not jeopardized the deal. The news media does not ask him about steroids because he will not address the issue, and even with the Balco case settled, Giambi will not publicly examine his past.
"It'll open up a whole big can of worms," he said.
For Giambi, it is better to focus on baseball. Early this season, he said, he worked so much with the hitting coach Don Mattingly that he needed two cortisone injections in his left elbow to combat tendinitis. And his body took time to re-adjust to the rigors of the regular season.
But even when his average bottomed out at .195 on May 9, Giambi could feel his old skills returning. He had no interest in a minor-league stint. He was still drawing walks, a sign that he was not anxious at the plate. He soon started hitting balls solidly, off the barrel of the bat, not the handle.
The power would be last to come, Torre felt, and it exploded in July with 14 homers, the most by a Yankee in a month since Mickey Mantle in July 1961.
Giambi wears No. 25 because the digits equal 7, Mantle's number. He pointed that out, tearfully, at his first Yankees news conference in 2001, sharing a moment with his father, John, who grew up a Mantle fan in California.
Now, through it all, Giambi is living the fantasy again. Fairy tales do not include words like steroids, but the subtext is there and Giambi knows it. If he does not exactly feel vindicated, he is proud of his success.
This is the clean Jason Giambi, he insists, and the clean Giambi is a star.
"I was always a great player," he said. "I never had any doubts. That's what kept me determined, because I knew, in me, that it was there."
