SEATTLE — Jose Guillen, Ryan Franklin, Ron Villone and nine other players who spent at least some time with the Seattle Mariners were named Thursday in the Mitchell Report, the long-awaited study on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
No current Mariners were listed in the report by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, hired by commissioner Bud Selig to examine the era of steroids.
Some of the dozen ex-Mariners mentioned were barely with the team, such as infielder Manny Alexander and pitchers Josias Manzanillo and Jim Parque.
“We are disappointed that the names of any former Mariners players appear in the Mitchell Report,” Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said in a statement released through a team spokesman. “The only information we have is what is in the report, and we are still sorting through all the material.
“The Seattle Mariners believe that the fundamental goal is to eliminate performance-enhancing substances from the game of baseball and establish procedures to monitor them on an ongoing basis. … This investigation provides a lot of information and recommendations that will further our efforts to reach the goal.”
Armstrong did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on what’s next for the Mariners and baseball on this issue. The team spokesman said Armstrong had multiple speaking engagements Thursday afternoon and evening.
When players’ union chief Donald Fehr was asked the same question during a news conference Thursday evening in New York, he said, “I don’t know what the next step is.”
Guillen played well this past season for Seattle before the team declined to exercise its $9 million contract option for 2008 on the right fielder. That was a week before a published report last month said Guillen had purchased $20,000 worth of steroids and human growth hormone in 2003-05, before he became a Mariner.
Armstrong said then that the team had no knowledge that Guillen was or had been involved in performance-enhancing drugs and that he, Armstrong, would presume Guillen innocent until proven guilty.
Earlier this month, Major League Baseball suspended Guillen for the first 15 days of next season for violating its drug policy on the same day he signed a $36 million, three-year contract with the Kansas City Royals.
Franklin, an eight-year veteran who played last season with the St. Louis Cardinals, was suspended for 10 days in August 2005, while he was with the Mariners, for testing positive for steroids in May of that year. Page 238 of Mitchell’s 409-page report said Villone referred then-Seattle teammate Franklin to Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets clubhouse attendant accused of supplying drugs to players.
Radomski’s cooperation with Mitchell and his investigators provided the bulk of the report’s details on named players.
The report stated “Villone called Radomski and told him to send Anavar and Deca-Durabolin, and Radomski did so.”
At the time of his suspension, Franklin said he had no idea how he tested positive, though he did say he took supplements he bought at a store.
“There’s got to be a flaw in the system,” he said. “I have no clue. … I just know deep in my heart that I’d never do anything like that.”
In his report, Mitchell writes that he asked Franklin to meet with him and respond but “he declined.”
There are similar notes of noncooperation at the end of each subsection that alleges a player’s use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Villone pitched for the Mariners in 2004 and ‘05. The report said Villone first ordered human growth hormone from Radomski in 2004, and that “Radomski sent this order to Villone at the Seattle Mariners’ clubhouse.”
The report also details a meeting between the ‘04 and ‘05 seasons at a diner for a second purchase, and that a third sale, during the 2005 season, was sent to Villone’s home in Seattle.
Villone is accused of paying Radomski $3,200 in cash for each transaction.
“On two occasions, Villone mailed Radomski a Mariners’ yearbook in which he had placed cash inside the pages of the book,” the report states.
David Segui, who played for the Mariners in 1998-99 and is now out of baseball, is named in the report as having “dealt with” Radomski more than any other major league player. The report states that “according to Radomski, Deca-Durabolin was Segui’s steroid of choice during the 1990s,” but does not specify if Segui was purchasing or using the drug during his time in Seattle.
The report also produced a copy of a check for $3,200 — Radomski’s “typical price for two kits of human growth hormone,” Mitchell writes — from Glenallen Hill, who played half a season in Seattle in 1998. The report also names Ismael Valdes, whose 12-year career that ended in 2005 included a stint in ‘02 with Seattle, and another former Mariners pitcher, Todd Williams. Williams played for Seattle in 1999, and the report states he bought the steroid Winstrol from Radomski once in 2001.
Also named: infielders David Bell and Fernando Vina. Vina tried a comeback during spring training in 2006 with Seattle.
The report describes a purchase of Deca-Durabolin in July 2005 that “was intended to assist Vina in preparing for spring training in 2006.”
Jose Lopez beat out Vina for the second-base job that spring.
Parque won 31 games in the major leagues from 1998-2003, including 30 with Chicago. He runs a baseball academy in Puyallup, Wash., where late last year a student taunted him as being “washed up” and challenged him to pitch. Surprising arm strength led to a chance in spring training with Seattle and eventually a half-season at Triple-A until Parque quit baseball this past summer.
The report contains a photocopy of a $1,600 check Parque is accused of writing to Radomski on Dec. 6, 2003, after he had finished a season in the Tampa Bay organization. Radomski said that check was for the second purchase of human growth hormone he sent to Parque that year.
Parque told the Seattle Times on Thursday: “I know I went through another (Triple-A) player and he said he’d get me some stuff. But it wasn’t human growth hormone or anything like that.”
Parque told the newspaper he bought creatine, another supplement to increase his red blood cells and a “South American fruit that’s supposed to cleanse your system.
“I was just getting supplements,” Parque said. “To say I was getting those other things is totally and utterly incorrect and false.”
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