Andy Pettitte might be laying low at the moment, but the same cannot be said of the recently named-and-shamed Jim Parque (above), who unloaded within earshot of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley.
‘Either someone isn’t telling the truth, or steroids really don’t work because I was throwing 80, 81 mph before the report said I took them, and I was throwing 80, 81 mph after I allegedly took them,” Parque told the Sun-Times in a phone interview. ”You have a guy that was trying to plea-bargain to save his own ass, so of course he’s going to throw as many names as possible out there.”Parque, who pitched for the Sox and Tampa Bay Devil Rays from 1998 to 2003 — and tried to come out of retirement with the Seattle Mariners last year before calling it quits — was one of 53 players listed in the Mitchell Commission Report concerning the investigation of former New York Mets clubhouse assistant Kirk Radomski.
According to the report, ”Radomski did not recall who referred Parque to him but said that he made two sales of human growth hormone to him. Radomski said that during the 2003 offseason, Parque sent Radomski a bottle of Winstrol to ‘check out.’ Radomski determined it was ‘no good’ and discarded it.”
It goes on to say that Radomski had Parque’s phone numbers and address, as well as two checks from Parque totaling $4,800 that also were shown in the report.
Parque admitted to sending the checks and said he received in return ”a bunch of supplements, some creatine, vitamins, some stuff to increase my red-blood-cell count and some herbs from South America that were supposed to help with my injuries.”
Parque said he was given Radomski’s name by a former teammate on Tampa Bay’s Class AAA affiliate and didn’t think it was important to ”throw another name under the bus.”
”I don’t even know this Kirk guy,” Parque said. ”The player that gave me his name told me to write the checks to [Radomski] because he had access to all of this stuff.”
I’ve watched enough TV to know exactly how Radomski’s interrogation went down. After he’d already served up Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada and Paul Lo Duca, Sen. George Mitchell warned the former batboy he could make it a lot easier on himself if he just came clean about one more household name.
Herbs from South America. They need to stop providing people with material…it’s almost too easy.