The Palm Beach Post’s Carlos Frias receives the gory details from an anonymous NL player with 10 years of service time. (link culled from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)

Greenies, they’re diet pills, as far as I know. It’s rampant. A guy I played with in Detroit, he would take two just to go take simulated pitching. I mean, simulated pitching. He would bean up just to take some swings off a guy throwing on the side.

I’ve heard guys order them off the Internet or get them from Latin players. They sell them over-the-counter (in Latin America), so everybody knows somebody there. Guys get them during winter ball. In Double-A, guys would get them in spring training and stock up. If you ran out, everybody knew a major-leaguer who you could call to get some more.

You’re in pain all the time. Baseball’s different than all the other sports, because you’re playing 162 games. We’ve got NFL players who can’t believe what goes on in a baseball clubhouse ” guys playing cards, watching TV, five minutes before a game. With them, they’re banging their heads against a locker to get pumped up. With us, you’re relaxed, then you’ve got to go out and play.

(Greenies) help loosen you up. … It speeds you up for the game, it lessens your appetite. That’s what happens. I know a guy who played 10 years in the big leagues. He tested positive and they sent him to rehab because he was losing so much weight. He was addicted to them.

When I was with Tampa, they had one they called the “speckled trout”. It was orange and white. There’s all kinds. It seems there’s a pill for every condition. If it’s too sunny, if it’s cloudy. The one I used was a little green pill. One kind you get in the Dominican, another you get in Mexico.

There are other pills that basically do the same thing, but I haven’t seen much of those. I’ve even seen guys who use Ritalin sometimes. You see it more with pitchers than hitters. When you see guys like Roger Clemens throwing a bat at somebody, it makes you think.