While it’s already established that Jack Clark will publicly critique the St. Louis Cardinals, he’s apparently graduated from bashing retired ex-Cards to smearing those who are still (somewhat) active (albeit with diminishing skills,) if not repeating an old story SANS ATTRIBUTION TO WILL LEITCH. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Dan Caesar explains, Clark’s used his new radio gig alongside Kevin Slaten at WGNU to unload on Albert Pujols (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory).
Clark has brought Pujols’ situation up at least twice already on the air. The first time, after Slaten said last Friday that he long has believed that Pujols “has been a juicer,” Clark jumped in before Slaten finished his thought and said, “I know for a fact he was. The trainer that worked with him, threw him batting practice from Kansas City, that worked him out every day, basically told me that’s what he did.”
Mihlfeld “had told me what he was doing with ‘Poolie’ — threw him batting practice, worked him out, shot him up, all that stuff,” Clark said on the air.
In a phone interview Thursday, Clark said that he and Mihlfeld spent a lot of time together in 2000 when they were with the Dodgers.
“I had asked him about conditioning and working me out, what he would do for me, and he asked me whether I had ever thought of taking some steroids,” Clark said. “… He just told me that he wanted me to get started on steroids and he had some other guys that were doing it. He told me that’s how he’s conditioning this guy that he met out of high school and college and he looked like he was going to be a star, keep an eye on him.’’
“He told me, ‘Well you couldn’t do what I do with Albert Pujols, he’s on this real strenuous workout deal.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to try to do that.’ Every day he kind of came to me and says, ‘you ready to do it? I’m ready to do it.’ I said, ‘Well I’m just not a needle guy, I’ve had enough surgeries and injuries over the years. I don’t like needles … I’m not going to do that … I’m not a player anymore.
“He had told me he had done that with Pujols, with steroids, and I really never thought too much about it because steroids were really not on my radar screen at that time.”
Clark also made a number of disparaging comments about Justin Verlander and Shawn Green, with the latter accused of having “a bunch of acne on his back.” (“here I am in LA as the hitting coach and Shawn Green is breaking Duke Snider’s record while cheating on steroids. It’s just disappointing to me.”
(ADDENDUM – Following a threat of legal action from Albert Pujols, Clark and co-host Kevin Slaten have been relieved of their duties by insideSTL, the company that purchases weekday airtime from WGNU).